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People with special needs are perhaps the most sidelined people in society -- their existence and roles in a community mostly go unrecognized.
It is very tough for people on wheelchair to go to places due to limited facilities or the non existence of infrastructure and when I say infrastructure, I don't mean costly, fancy and lavish amenities.
Yes, toilets and parking lots that are reserved for the disabled are in manifestation but it is earthly anything but omnipresent.
Instead of stairs at the shop lots' corridors, ramps with a low slant will make places accessible for wheelchair users. This of course gives wheelchair users a high degree of dependence, confidence as the ramps facilitate their movements.
In my city, very few places have ramps and elevators and other places are like off-limits for people on wheelchairs.
While an eminent and posh shopping mall in my area has elevators, the food court and the GSC cinema theater are inaccessible for wheelchair bound people -- there are no ramps leading to the food court and the only way to get to the theater housed in the mall is by escalator. Are disabled people in my city or anywhere in the world second class citizens who don't deserve to watch movies on the big screen and have the joy of eating out when shopping?
I have seen people on wheelchairs being carried while still being in their wheelchair; it must truly be demotivating, having others helping you just to get to a place that is so near yet so far due to obstacles like stairs and boulders.
A person of special needs deserves a life as good as an able bodied person and built in low degree ramps can make a whole lot of positive difference for them. It is inexpensive, requires minimal material and it will change lives.
The welfare money provided by the Malaysian Welfare Department for people with disabilities is merely RM 300. It is pittance.
With price of goods and fuel skyrocketing, the money barely makes ends meet. The nation's budgets in recent and previous years have ignored the disabled wholly; no affirmative allocations to uplift the quality of the lives of people with disabilities were tabled.
Development is meaningless if there are units of society still suffering, their cries muffled by the buzz of advancement. The development of the people of a nation should be even -- then only the nation is completely developed.
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