VIJAYAWADA: The Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways had drafted an advisory and set of guidelines for all the States recently, asking them to make at least 25 per cent of their bus fleet and private passenger vehicles accessible to the people with disabilities (PWD).
The state of the State-owned transport corporation buses in Andhra Pradesh was found to be not that friendly for the differently-abled persons.
According to the APSRTC officials, out of the total 9,801 buses owned by the corporation, only 45 were found to be accessible to persons with disability. The corporation has 12,600 buses under its wing in total, with the rest being procured through tenders.
For GN Anusha, who is visually-impaired and employed as an IT instructor, using public transport facilities for commuting to her workplace at Tadigadapa from Gosala is not an easy task. “Usually, visually-impaired persons like me find it difficult to identify the bus and its service number as there are no announcements made before the bus arrives. At several bus shelters, the RTC officials keep charts of bus routes but we cannot access these during the peak hours,” she said. With no option left, Anusha has started to travel in cabs and auto-rickshaws now. She urged the RTC management to focus on arranging boards, which mention the route and service number of the bus, written in Braille near the seats meant for visually-impaired passengers.
Visually Challenged Employees’ Welfare Association State president G Ravindra Babu suggested that the RTC management provide seating facility for the visually-impaired persons in the first row. A large number of persons with locomotor disability also face difficulties while boarding the existing buses, he added. Officials should allocate spaces for keeping wheelchairs and arrange ramps for better access.
At present, low-floor buses introduced under JNNURM scheme operated by the RTC have provision for disabled persons, such steps should be taken in the remaining buses at the earliest, Ravindra Babu opined.
“We welcome the decision of the Ministry to make public transport accessible to the PWD. But it would incur huge expenses for the cash-strapped RTC to modify the existing ones. RTC can make provisions for disabled persons in new buses while manufacturing them,” said RTC EU State general secretary P Damodar Rao.