On the eve of the National Day for Helping the Disabled which falls on Sunday, Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu visited a school for the disabled Saturday, calling for enhancing education for the disabled.

Hui extended festival greetings to the country's disabled, their families and teaching staff of disabled people.

"Education is a basic requirement for the disabled to equally participate in social activities," said Hui, also director of the disabled working committee of the State Council, or Cabinet.

China has more than 83 million people with various kinds of disabilities, accounting for 6.34 percent of the total population.

He said ensuring sound educational condition for the disabled was an important part of the country's efforts to offer the public equal access to education and "a key symbol of social progress."

Hui asked local governments to fully mobilize all social forces to promote a coordinated development of the disabled and common education.

In the Beijing No. 2 School for the Deaf, established in 1919, Hui visited classrooms and places for extracurricular activities, seeing students attend classes via a hearing assistance aid system, blind students play pingpong and mental-challenged students do some handcraft.

He encouraged students to be "confident and independent" and become useful people in society, and called for the public to care for education of the disabled children.

(Xinhua News Agency May 17, 2009)