Make facilities disabled-friendly, MCC urged
MIRI: The Miri City Council ( MCC) has been called on to ensure public facilities are more accessible for the disabled.
Wheelchair user Boon Foo Ping complained to The Borneo Post that there are currently too many barriers for the disabled.
“I became physically disabled after a spine injury when I was 17 years old. Through the years, I have experienced a lot of day-to- day challenges because the public facilities that are built are causing more inconvenience than helping people,” said the 37-year- old.
He said there are very limited disabled parking spaces at certain commercial centres, which causes further challenges for drivers such as himself.
“Adding to the headache is the width of the parking space, which is very small. I always have to plan the way to get down from my vehicle. To make the problem worse, I found that a lot of reckless drivers would resort to parking at handicapped parking spaces, to which they say they are in a rush,” he lamented.
He also pointed out the lack of ramps to get into buildings.
“The lack of planning and consideration is causing us a lot of problems,” he said, adding that the newly- completed Marine Commercial Centre is about the only place here with such a facility.
Boon said applying for a disabled car sticker is also a complicated procedure.
“I, for one, have been there and there are tons of problems that have been ignored by the authorities,” he said, pointing out that medical verification is one of the requirements.
“However, from my own experience, there is no doctor who knows how to write a proper letter to verify that the applicant is physically handicapped. I had even enquired with the staff at Miri City Council for the proper format to no avail. They just roughly told me how, but had no idea of the proper format for the letter of verification.”
Boon also claimed that disabled drivers here are limited to using disabled parking spaces.
“In places like Kuala Lumpur, there is no restriction to where handicapped drivers must park, as we could park at any place if there is no designated handicapped parking place, but it is a totally different story in Miri.
“We will be fined for parking at normal parking lots even though there is no handicapped parking lot at all, which has me puzzled many times,” he claimed.