“I THINK a wheelchair is like a limb to the handicapped person,” says Harman Singh Sidhu. The 46-year-old man, who runs NGO Arrive Safe India, should know. He has been confined to a wheelchair since 1996, when he was paralyzed in a road accident
“I was bedridden after my accident for nearly two years and then in 1998 I somehow managed to move my life on a wheel chair. It’s become my wheel of life now,” says Sidhu, a resident of Sector 21. With his two-decade first-hand experience of navigating Chandigarh in a wheelchair, Sidhu says steps taken by the UT Administration fall short of the minimum requirements of people like him.
“Chandigarh Administration may have some facilities, but practically speaking, these are not of much use,” he says.
Sidhu, who had done a survey on the structures set up in Chandigarh to facilitate the disabled in wheelchairs, found that 70 per cent of locations in the city which have ramps or structures to ease the people in wheelchairs, do not meet the specifications laid down by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.
“The government or the authorities concerned should see that disabled or handicapped people can also live their life to some normal extent. But the authorities hardly care for the handicaps and the structures set up to move the wheelchairs are hardly of any use because that are not practically thought of while designing them,” he says.
“It is a herculean task for a disabled in a wheelchair to move alone. The ramps at several locations in the city are either so elevated or are so slippery that a wheelchair-bound person has to have a person accompanying him or her. The markets of sectors 9, 23, 37 and 35 have no proper provisions for handicapped people. There are parking slots for the handicapped parking but these are not easy to approach for the disabled. The facilities if provided are just a mere formality.”
Life has already been cruel to people in wheelchairs, says Sidhu, adding that they have learnt not to have high expectations. “But at least basic work should be done to provide some ease, so that we can also think of moving about almost if not entirely like normal people. Handicapped people should not been treated with pity but should be supported like powerful men, who are moving ahead challenging life,” Sidhu says.
