Market discriminates against handicapped patrons

Satish Nakched, Suva

It is a good experience shopping around the new Nausori Market due to the well organised stall formation that allows easy manoeuvring and the attractive range of the vegetables product on sale. On Saturdays it is like a carnival atmosphere where apart from the shopping you will occasionally bump into many acquaintances.

The readily mixed kava stall is a joy to go to where the thirsty shoppers can buy a single serve of the yaqona drink and move on with the business. However I believe that the new premises is discriminatory in its design where the engineers failed to recognise the needs of physically challenged people.

All the entrances into the market is slightly inclined as the floor of the new market is higher that the outside corridors.

Any person on a wheel chair will not be able to get inside due to the barrier that is there.

But quite surprisingly it was noted that the entrance opposite the bus stand side had a little concrete ramp built in the centre of the entrance to cater for the wheel borrow boys.

The designers had completely ignored the human element and is in direct breach to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which is embedded into our Constitution.

The building also breached the National Building Code of Fiji that governs all the building construction and is very much in line with the Australian and New Zealand building codes.

The National Building Code of Fiji clearly states the requirement for access for people with disabilities and all the building (class 9) must be provided with the means of a continuous path of travel in accordance to the standards.

This market is not user friendly for the physically challenged.

Such ignorance is difficult to comprehend as we have documents to guide the designers to provide fairness to all the stakeholders and in this case the basic human touch is missing from the new structure.