MRT not up-to-the-mark for disabled-friendly facilities

MRT stations not designed with the disabled in mind

S Neesha • Dec 24, 2016
oku
Last Updated 25th December, 2016, 10:55 AM

KUALA LUMPUR: Disappointing and sad were the words used by disabled activist Anthony Thanasayan to describe his recent visit to Mass Rapid Transport (MRT) stations along the 21km-long line Sungai Buloh-Semantan line.

Thanasayan and several other wheelchair bound activists from the Independent Living and Training Centre Malaysia (ILTC) made the unannounced trip last Wednesday to see how wheelchair-friendly the country’s newest and latest transportation service was.

“We practically unearthed a very ugly can of worms right from the start, so much so, we thought the whole exercise was going to end before we even started,” said Thanasayan when contacted.

He said that one of the biggest letdown was to find disabled car parks being abused by able-bodied drivers.
“In TTDI (Taman Tun Dr Ismail) station we found three non-disabled cars sandwiched in wheelchair-reserved parking for two vehicles.

“In Sungai Buloh (station) we found more than a dozen non-disabled cars in handicapped slots.

“One was shameless Big Shot’s car complete with an emblem in the front,” lamented the ex-PJ councillor.
He said that another shock was the way the staff in the TTDI MRT station handled the Help Button pillars placed in front of the disabled car parks and lifts.

“Although it (help pillars) was super high tech, clearly the people behind the controls were incompetent in handling and managing it.

“Nobody answered the ringing tones even though we had made as many as 10 calls to them.

“When they finally responded, the voice on the other end seemed confused, rude and apathetic to our calls for help.

“They took a good 10 minutes to get to us even though they were only a few metres from us inside the building.

“The initial treatment they gave us made us feel unwelcome and unwanted to their station as passengers with disabilities,” said Thanasayan.

He added that inside the stations, it was no different, only more “half-baked” efforts to seem disable-friendly.

“We saw one mistake after another. Half-baked!,” said Thanasayan. As an example he mentioned the station floors which are embedded with tact-tiles for the blind to navigate around the stations.

“The trail goes from the outside right to the ticketing place but not where you buy your tickets. That’s on the left, the other side. So I asked them is it free for the blind because the line is going straight to the ticketing part. They said no they will call out to the blind. How absurd is that?

“There is a group of disabled people advising the MOT (Transport Ministry), then how did this happen?

This is very bad.

It is not up to mark.

“If this is the mentality and if they cannot do their homework right, then it just shows that they just don’t care. They think they are not going to be disabled. How could the planners, experts get it so wrong,” said Thanasayan.

Snake Year To Usher In Better Facilities for Baskin-Robbins And Mid Valley City

PETPOSITIVE NEWSFLASH!

DATELINE MID VALLEY MEGA MALL:

aNt's aNgle: 

RECALL my articles in PET+BLOGSPOT (Wheelchair Accessibility Is My Flavour) and in Wheel Power in The Star recently (Provide venues accessible to the disabled and elderly) where I wrote about my bitter experience visiting an ice-cream cafe recently. 

After paying almost RM20.00 for two scoops of it, I had no place to eat my delicious blob of ices decently? 

The unfriendly ice-cream bar

Well, Baskin-Robbins, run by Golden Scoop Sdn Bhd, has graciously responded to my complaints - bless them!

Here's an email I received last week from Strategic Consultant Charmaine Cheah who profusely apologised for what I had to go through in their cafe in Gardens Mid Valley.

With such good news to come for ice-cream lovers, allow me to take this opportunity to wish all PET+BLOGSPOT readers a most meaningful and prosperous Year of the Snake over the weekend and the next. 

Have a good one all!

PS: I also received a similar email from Stephanie Tan of Advertising and Promotions (PR) from Mid Valley City apologising for the "inconvenience caused" to wheelchair patrons. 

Tan said she appreciated the feedback provided as Mid Valley City is currently "in the midst of enhancing the facilities mall-wide for a better disabled-friendly environment." 

"We will have a detailed discussion with the mentioned tenants. Once again, we apologise for your unpleasant experience," concluded Tan.

Here's Charmaine's email in full: 

Dear Anthony

First of all, I would like to apologise for not replying sooner.

This is because we took your comments seriously, and we wanted this issue to be brought to the attention of the management team.

We hope to be able to come back to you with good action plans, instead of a mere apology.

We thank you very much for taking your time to give us your valuable feedbacks, and we appreciate the fact that you personally made a phone call to our Operations team to highlight on the article you wrote in Star2 last Thursday.

We agree with your views, and we must apologise for not being attentive enough when we designed the Gardens outlet. 

Ice cream is a treat for everyone and it is our intention to keep the interest of all customers at heart. 

Please be rest assured that this is not the standard that we intend to deliver, and we agree that our store at Gardens should have a wheelchair ramp to the raised platform. 

We sincerely apologise for our oversight on this matter.

As we are relocating our Gardens store to a new location, we ensured that our business development team is well informed of this matter, and many thanks to your feedbacks, we will be able to provide a friendly environment for all ice cream lovers at Gardens real soon.

While we are doing assessments on the other stores, we welcome your feedback at any point of time should there be any room for improvement. You may call me directly (DELETED) or Haliza (Operations Manager) and we will be happy to assist you in any matter.

Once again, we are sorry for your bad experience at our store.

We highly appreciate your comments as it will assist us in becoming better in what we do.

It is our goal to retain you as a satisfied customer and we sincerely hope to serve you again in the future.

I wish you a Happy Chinese New Year, and a very fruitful 2013.

With apologies,

Charmaine Cheah

Strategic Consultant

Golden Scoop Sdn. Bhd. 

(Baskin-Robbins Malaysia)

"We Make People Happy"

A-15-1, Tower A, Northpoint Office,

Mid Valley City, No. 1 Medan Syed Putra Utara,

59200 Kuala Lumpur

Malaysia.

E: wanqian@baskinrobbins.com.my

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