Call to make all future projects in Chennai disabled-friendly

CHENNAI: As the deadline — July 2022 — to make all infrastructure and public spaces inclusive is nearing, disability rights groups in the city have called for making all upcoming projects disabled-friendly. This comes at a time when the Greater Chennai corporation plans to lay new roads, set up toilets along ECR road and renovate parks and other public spaces.
Smitha Sadasivan, member, Disability Rights Alliance, Tamil Nadu, said the corporation should involve people with disabilities and disability right groups at the design stage itself.“Chennai metro rail did the biggest mistake of not including any disabled right group at the planning stage,” she said.
In 2014, the civic body had promised to make pavements disabled-friendly but bollards, lack of tactile markings and lack of proper gradient of the ramps have made them unusable, said Vaishnavi Jayakumar, member, Disability Rights Alliance (DRA). She added that by 2018, public transport should have been made disabled-friendly. “We are yet to meet that deadline,” she rued.
As per Rights of Persons With Disabilities Act, the requirements of disabled people should have been aligned with the building code. “So the government doesn’t have any excuse, any new infrastructure should be inclusive,” she said. She explained that basic infrastructure such as e-toilets are not accessible for the disabled. Even for parks, they should be planned in such a way that all parks have at least one equipment that is inclusive to ensure disabled persons mingle with everyone and can lead a normal life, she said.
Rashmi R, a resident of Ashok Nagar and a mother to a disabled child said that the government usually just added a ramp to everything and declared the infrastructure inclusive. “But there is more than just a ramp that we require,” she said.
A senior engineer from the Greater Chennai corporation told TOI that several meetings had been held to make roads and pavements disabled friendly but there are challenges. “If we remove bollards, there would be encroachments and illegal parking. We will ensure that all future projects have their suggestions included,” he said.