As people with disabilities grapple with a severe lack of accessible and affordable transport, forcing many to spend a significant portion of their monthly benefits on travel, two companies are teaming up to improve accessibility.
At a presentation at the Barbados Council for the Disabled’s (BCD) Garrison headquarters on Thursday, advocates for the disabled community highlighted how challenging and costly it is for people with disabilities to go about their business on a daily basis.
“There are many challenges that persons with disabilities meet in their daily lives and transportation is an essential part of the daily living activities of persons with disabilities. We need to socially interact, we need to do shopping, some of us work and some others do other things. We don’t have the luxury sometimes of having transport at our beck and call,” said BCD President Patricia Padmore-Blackman, adding that transport was “an area of need for persons with disabilities. We cannot do a whole lot unless we have affordable and accessible transportation”.
To strengthen her point, BCD Vice-President Ambassador Kerry-Ann Ifill gave an example of a person with disabilities travelling from their home in St James to Bridgetown. Pointing out that in some cases people with disabilities get roughly $960 in social monthly benefits from the government, she said one trip to and fro could cost around $160 for private transport.
In addition, Ifill said there were only a few public options people from her community could access including two dedicated buses the council provided. One vehicle is used as a school bus and the other for adult commuters. Both vehicles, she said, needed to be replaced urgently as they were constantly breaking down. She added that those services were heavily subsidised and it was cutting too deep into the council’s expenditure.
“The council is financially drained by maintaining the two buses that we have because they break down often . . .”
Under these circumstances, she said any collaboration with the private sector was welcomed.
Blessed Rentals Inc., a business that provides transport services to persons with disabilities and pickUp Barbados, a taxi-hailing application, have joined forces to help with the mobility needs of disabled people.
Blessed Rentals’ services will now be available on the pickUp Barbados app which has added additional features to their app to ensure persons with disabilities can engage with the software.
Regional manager of pickUp Hannah Gill also donated forty $50 vouchers to the council.
During the presentation, the Managing Director of Blessed Rentals Michael Holder said the paratransit vehicle industry was small due to the cost associated with maintaining the vehicles, especially if the lift was malfunctioning. Operators also had to be specially trained to drive as disabled people as potholes and other road surface issues could inflict serious pain on amputees. They also had to be trained to physically carry people with disabilities as in almost every instance, business places and private residences did not have ramps at entrances.
The BCD officials expressed their gratitude to the two firms for their work to help improve the quality of life for people with disabilities. (SZB)
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