People with disabilities are calling on the Public Transport Service Corporation (PTSC) and the Water Taxi Service to make changes to two of its services which require a personal assistant to help someone with a disability to board the bus or water taxi.
The call was made by Sharda Ramlakhan of the Consortium of Disability Organisations during yesterday’s Joint Select Committee (JSC) on Human Rights, Equality and Diversity meeting at Tower D, Waterfront Centre, Port-of-Spain.
It was chaired by Community Development, Culture and the Arts Minister Nyan Gadsby-Dolly.
Ramlakhan was responding to a question from committee member and parliamentary secretary in the Ministry of National Security Glenda Jennings-Smith.
Ramlakhan said the requirement for someone to assist a disabled person on the bus and or water taxi was not inclusive and should be re-engineered as “it is not an inclusive service, it does not promote inclusion of persons with disabilities.
“It treats persons with disabilities as objects as opposed to subjects.”
She said that was a “grave concern and a human rights issue.”
With respect to the Water Taxi Service, Ramlakhan said disabled people using motorised vehicles were also being required to use a personal assistant to board the vessel.
She said that must be reviewed. “That just does not make sense (and) the attitude (of the Water Taxi operators) needs to shift for the environment to be so designed to accommodate persons with disabilities,” she said.
Another committee member, Opposition Senator Rodger Samuel, asked Ramlakhan what would be the fate of people with disabilities if the PTSC was unavailable due to industrial or other action.
She said the maxi taxi service should be given incentives to redesign their vehicles so that those vehicles could be accessible to disabled people.
In response to another question, the disabled people told the meeting that issues of transport, employment and health were of greater concern to them than finding a husband or wife.
In response to the question from Opposition MP Vidia Gayadeen-Gopeesingh, they said their disabilities did not negatively affect them in that regard as they all live normal married lives.