Big challenge for disabled - Wheel Power, The Star

Thursday September 11, 2008

Big challenge

Wheel Power: By Anthony Thanasayan

For the disabled participants at Beijing’s Paralympics Games, the event is often regarded as the highlight of their lives.

AS you read this, as many as 4,000 disabled athletes (including a dozen Malaysians) are taking part in Beijing’s Paralympics Games.

The event, held once every four years, traditionally takes place about three weeks after the Olympics. It is also held in the same country that the Olympic Games took place.

To the disabled sportsmen and sportswomen involved, the Paralympics is often regarded as the most important event in their lives.

(From left) Oscar Pistorious of South Africa, Heros Marai of Italy and Christoph Bausch of Switzerland in the heats of the men’s 100m T44 classification race at the 2008 Beijing Paralympic Games.

To me, the event is not only about who wins what and how well they performed. That is important, of course. But what is more important is how a particular sporting event has contributed to the people, and how it will continue to change their lives.

How will life change for the disabled community after major sporting events are over? BBC Online’s web page gave a peek into the lives of the handicapped in China.

The online page’s reporter followed an Olympic volunteer who used a wheelchair and travelled across Beijing by bus and subway, before the Games. The exposure made him realise how serious disability issues are in the country.

Although ramps and lifts were newly added for the Paralympics, this wasn’t so in other towns and villages in China.

The 82.7 million people with disabilities in China still face discrimination and prejudice, which make their daily lives difficult.

Universities in China are still reluctant to take in students with handicaps.

Human Rights Watch based in New York says that “8.58 million employable people with a disability in China did not have jobs last year.”

This even though the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities laws had been enacted and ratified not long ago.

“So far these protections have meant little to (disabled) persons (and) their advocates in China to be able to fairly compete for employment,” the organisation pointed out.

Despite this dismal outlook, the BBC says the good news is that the Chinese government has made a big effort to educate its citizens on how to talk to the disabled athletes during the Paralympics.

One pamphlet advises locals to be helpful, but not too pushy. It also suggests they should be more sensitive to those with disabilities.

Over here in Malaysia, it was announced that we had won the bid to host the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) world general assembly in Kuala Lumpur. The event will be held in November next year.

Even though this is joyous news for the disabled community, many of us are concerned about the issue of accessibility for the international disabled guests when they arrive in KL.

We know what a nightmare it is for a wheelchair user to move around in the capital.

Will the respective local councils be able to tackle these problems by the time our overseas guests arrive next year?

Or will our disabled visitors be restricted in their movements and told where they can go in the city?

Will they stay in posh hotels (with accessible shiny toilets) during their stay or will they be allowed to mingle with the rest of us and have a chance to see what Malaysia is really like?

If nothing is done from now until November next year, will our disabled guests want to come to Malaysia again?

And how would our disabled citizens benefit from such a visit? That is what I really like to know.