Joseph, a resident of Mulavukad, dearly misses the breezy evenings at Marine Drive these days, where he used to spend time with his friends.
Waiting for the ferry service that would take him to his native village, he and his friends used to sit on the embankment of the Kochi backwaters, discussing everything under the sun.
For the past few years, the area, also a busy trade centre where you could get anything from magazines to fruit juice to mobile recharge coupons, remains out of bounds for people like Joseph, a physically challenged person, who moves in a specially modified three-wheeler.
A three-step and two-feet tall barrier has been created at the entrance of the pathway that takes one to the northern side of the Marine Drive walkway and the boat yard.
Two-feet-tall yellow bollards could be seen erected at the entry points of all the newly developed roads in the city, including the Hospital Road and the one that runs close to the metro rail line at Kaloor, under the Smart City project.
The barriers were created to restrain vehicles from entering the area and reserving footpaths for pedestrians, said an official of Cochin Smart Mission Limited, the agency which is implementing the Smart City project.
Testimony to neglect
However, such barricades, and also the badly maintained footpaths and roads, add to the woes of people like Mr. Joseph who have limited access to public spaces and opportunities in life. The recently constructed foot overbridges across the national highway stretch between Aroor and Edappally stand as testimony to the creation of barriers for the disabled.
Most of the footpaths on the city roads are in bad shape, says Mr. Joseph.
One cannot safely move over them because of their uneven surface. There are pits, and covering slabs are missing in some places where footpaths are constructed over drains, exposing pedestrians to the risk of falling into them, he said.
“It’s quite difficult to get on to footpaths from roads as they are constructed at a height, which is inaccessible to people like me. So, every time I need to purchase something from a shop, I drive close to the shop and wait on the road for someone from the shop to come to me,” said Mr. Joseph narrating his everyday plight.
Barring a few hotels and restaurants, most of the public places in the city, including roads, parks, shopping complexes and other buildings, remain inaccessible to the differently-abled.
‘Challenging task’
Despite having legislation, said Sibi Kurian, State general secretary of the Kerala Vikalanga Association, most of the public spaces, including roads, are yet to become disabled-friendly. From roads to footpaths to bus bays to parking lots and public toilets, most of the public utility services were off limits to the differently-abled, he said.
“With uneven footpaths that are built without ramps, how can a wheelchair-bound or a physically challenged person access public places. Moving along the city footpaths is a challenging task even to a normal person,” he said.
Besides footpaths and roads, accessing public offices is a daunting task for the disabled. A large number of public offices from where welfare and employment schemes of people with disabilities are planned and implemented are located in buildings which are inaccessible to such people, he said.
‘No justification’
There was no justification for keeping those institutions, which had been created for supporting those with special needs, inaccessible to the target population, he said.
Incidentally, the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 prescribes that “all the existing public buildings shall be made accessible in accordance with the rules formulated by the Central government within a period not exceeding five years from the date of notification of such rules.”
The Act also states that the Central government can extend the deadline for State for such conversions on “a case-to-case basis for adherence to this provision depending on their state of preparedness and other related parameters.”
For Navoor Pareeth, a visually challenged college teacher, each day’s travel from Muvattupuzha, his hometown, to Kochi city, is filled with challenges.
From getting down at Vyttila and then hopping on to a city bus that would take him to the bus stop near Ernakulam Maharaja’s College and returning home in the evening is no mean task.
“Most of the footpaths in the city don’t have ramps that help visually challenged people like me travel safely. On a few occasions, I suffered injuries after my leg slipped into the gaps between covering slabs,” he said.
On some roads, where ramps are constructed, motorists, especially two-wheeler riders, misuse the facility to park their vehicles on footpaths. Such encroachments denied the disabled sections their right to way and life, Mr. Pareeth said.
These days, visually-challenged persons don’t confine themselves indoor. Most of them are educated and employed. The barriers that block the life of otherly-abled persons need to be removed, he said.
When footpaths were constructed at a height from the road, said Mr. Pareeth, people with disabilities found it difficult to access them. In such conditions, they were forced to move through the roads, he said.
Dedicated parking bays
Absence of dedicated parking bays, pointed out K.M. Varghese, the State treasurer of the Association, was another factor that is worrying disabled persons.
In developed countries, specific areas have been earmarked for parking the vehicles of the disabled. Such areas would remain open and accessible to the target group even when the parking bays were full and no one would encroach upon the reserved space, he pointed out.
In some countries, hoteliers appoint facilitators for helping the disabled get into eateries and have food comfortably. In a city like Kochi where even the public thoroughfares remained inaccessible to physically challenged persons, one could not dream of such facilities and people with disabilities were forced to confine themselves to the comforts of their homes, he said.