NEW DELHI: By December 2019, the more than 500 buildings maintained by Delhi’s Public Works Department (PWD) will be made accessible to physically handicapped people, officials from the department told The Sunday Standard. The timeline and targets for making the city more disabled-friendly were part of the recommendations of a five-member PWD committee set up to look into the matter in order to comply with The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, which mandates that the PWD has to provide fully accessible environments to persons with disabilities.
The committee, which is headed by a superintendent engineer-level officer, has also said in its report that 763 roads in the city have been earmarked for changes to become disabled-friendly. The report is to be submitted to PWD minister Satyendar Jain. “This process [increasing disabled-friendly infrastructure in the city] will be slow but at least a beginning has been made. Much work is left to be done” said TD Dhariyal, Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, Delhi.
The report also says that of the 560 public utility buildings in the city , 375, including 14 hospitals have been audited. Construction work for changes tio make them disabled-friendly is ongoing at these 14 hospitals. “A gross deficit in the disabled-friendly infrastructure at public places in the national capital makes Delhi’s fight for a global, smart city tag, a lost one.
Although progress is slow, proper changes are being carried out. The government also needs to look into maintenance of this infrastructure as without proper maintenance, they mostly get encroached upon and then lie to waste,” said Anil Aneja , nodal officer at Equal Opportunity cell in Delhi University.