I HAVE always been a strong supporter of public awareness.
Especially when it comes to people with disabilities and the many unnecessary barriers that are placed before us that prevent us from living a normal life.
Whilst most of my disabled (and even able-bodied colleagues) had at times run out of patience when trying to educate the non disabled about the needs of the handicapped, I’ve always somehow managed to muster extra patience when dealing with those on the opposite end of the spectrum.
Not, however, on last Thursday at the land office in Gombak in Selangor.
What transpired there was simply shocking to imagine in this day and age. It was also inexcusable and unacceptable.
A disabled couple – the gentleman, paralysed from his neck down and his wife, a paraplegic – dropped by at the building just before noon.
Instead of getting the soonest attention as one might have expected; seeing them in their wheelchairs and all, they were virtually ignored.
When the flustered couple insisted on seeing the district officer (DO), they were told he was at a meeting in his office. To add salt to their wounds, they were told to go back home, make an appointment and come back another day.
Did they bother to consider the difficulties the couple took to get there?
The gentleman, incidentally, being a tetraplegic spent two hours being dressed up by his caregiver and had to be carried by two extra helpers in and outside of his vehicle to get to the land office.
According to the couple, the DO left at lunchtime and did not even bother to meet them even for a minute or two. Nobody was assigned to deal with their problem, either.
Things just got from bad to worse during their three-hour ordeal.
Even the presence of the couple’s personal volunteers was not able to help them overcome the nasty obstacles at the land office building that ironically bore “disabled-friendly” signage.
The designated car park for the disabled, for one thing, was way too far from the entrance of the building.
It was uncovered and disabled visitors with crutches especially, would have a hell of a task to walk the distance to get to the building.
To exacerbate matters, the handicapped are all forced to cross an internal traffic of vehicles.
Imagine how terribly scary this can be for someone struggling to coordinate his uncooperative limbs and crutches at the same time or in a wheelchair?
The only car park that was next to the entrance with a perfectly sheltered one from rain and sun that was exclusively reserved for – the DO! It was ironically placed immediately next to the wheelchair ramp where all disabled car parks should be.
Then more perils followed.
The wheelchair ramp was much too steep. It clearly did not follow the proper guidelines by the building bylaws. Any wheelchair user – or a caregiver helping someone – could fall down and seriously end up in hospital.
Wheelchair-users trying to wheel themselves up the ramp could easily be tipped backwards without realising it. Once that happens, they stand a high risk of suffering severe head injuries by their heads hitting the floor.
Caregivers, especially women and children, could send their loved ones hurtling out-of-control with wheelchairs crashing on the walls or at the sides of the ramp.
The situation became even more treacherous by the constantly wet and slippery floor caused by a steady stream of water leaking from the roof.
Then came the nightmare of nightmares, especially for all women with disabilities.
There was no disabled-friendly loo in the women’s restroom.
Instead, disabled women would have to enter right into the men’s toilet, in full view of all the urinals in display and enter into the cubicle to attend to the calls of nature.
I couldn’t for the world of me imagine how a very important government building such as the land office could subject disabled women to such a violation of their rights and dignity like this?
When we asked the authorities as to how they could allow such a thing to happen, they unabashedly gave the “reason” that the “building was about 30 years old” and that they had “a lack of funds” to do it.
With the numbers of disabled persons only increasing (rather than decreasing) in the country and with Malaysia rapidly becoming a full-fledged elderly nation by 2035, the question we need to ask is how long are we going to keep on giving the same old excuses of “old buildings” and “lack of funds” to keep out a significant number of people that we have wrongfully marginalised for so long?
Is it truly an issue of a lack of funds or really a total neglect of deciding what’s really important in our policies and where our spending should go into?
The End
PET+BLOGSPOT is the official online blog of the Malaysian Animal-Assisted Therapy for the Disabled and Elderly Association (Petpositive). Our contents are ACCURATE, RELIABLE and THE LATEST. We offer both local and foreign news on animals, disability and the elderly. PET+BLOGSPOT was first established in October 2007. Our hits since then is 35,000 hits and counting. PET+BLOGSPOT is updated daily. Kindly take note that views expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of PETPOSITIVE. You may also visit our Webpage by browsing: www.petpositive.com.my
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