Image Courtesy: pragueairport.co.uk
Challenges Persist For Differently Abled
The incident of misbehavior with differently abled passengers are not new. Even our Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi in his ‘Mann ki Baat’ stressed about giving a respectable position to the disabled people by calling them as ‘Divyang’. Divyang literally means the one who have specially-abled organs and qualities. Although we talk about equality, but for Divyang people our society’s perspective is more or less same, which can be explained by the incidents given below.
Apathy At The Airports
Recently at Mumbai Airport a Divyang passenger Antara Telang bravely opened on the rude and insensitive behavior by the Airport staff. She tweeted about the incident explaining how her prosthetic leg was taken off and scanned by the luggage scanner along with other passenger bags. This misbehavior brought her into tears. She had faced such humiliation numerous time on Mumbai Airport. The girl had to wait 45 min on the security check without providing any option and eventually she ended up missing her flight. She also said that other Airports do have special arrangements for people like her. Explosive Trace Detectors (ETD) are used for security check but no such mishap is ever done anywhere in the World like done by Mumbai Airport Security Staff. She also blamed Mumbai Airport Authority for constantly ignoring her request and complaints, she claimed that security system do not pose proper infrastructure for attending the differently abled people.
@CSIAMumbai @MumbaiCentral forced to take off jeans, had prosthetic leg passed through a scanner, and brought to tears. Happy journey to me
— Antara Telang (@AntaraT) January 30, 2016
In another case a divyang woman Anita Ghai who is a Delhi University Associate Professor was denied to a wheelchair after she deboarded from an Air India flight. The reason sighted was of security. The lady had to crawl all the way to her wheelchair. However the authorities have denied the charges. The woman said “I boarded this flight with four of my colleagues. Despite my repeated request, the air hostess did not recognize my requirement for a wheelchair after reaching. The flight reached at 7:30 PM. I waited patiently with one of my friends.”
The Logical Indian recognizes the immense difficulty differently abled people go through and we sincerely request government authorities who are in charge of public transport to make life easy for all especially the differently-abled people. Let us also as citizens do our part in making life easy for the differently abled people. We request the Airports Authority of India to review the infrastructure at the Airports and ensure India’s airports are inclusive in nature.
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