Accessibility should be on fast track

DEEPLY TOUCHED: I am an immediate family member of a physically less-able young person, doing well in secondary education. I, our family and some neighbours, we are all grateful to Daily News for devoting center page on Wednesdays, to highlight the crucial need of “equal access to everyone”. Its absence has already affected the quality of life of large numbers.

We are also deeply touched and greatly moved by the unrelenting continuing efforts by Dr. Ajith C. S. Perera, to uplift the ‘social prisoners’ of our society, and position them in the mainstream.

His article on May 16 in the ‘Debate Page’ was educative, informative and thought provoking. Most certainly Sri Lanka should fast track accessibility to all public buildings and places. We feel the great importance of an architecturally accessible society, for the promotion of an inclusive society.

It is a time even when our increasing number of heroic disabled service personnel, badly need facilities to attend independently to their daily needs in accessing banks, markets, business and government establishments.

Even senior citizens expected that. 2007 declared by the government as the ‘Year of accessibility to all’ would bring the required changes. But it appears, this vital need of National importance, has been overlooked with talking but no real action and results.

Limited mobility and perceptional skills, should be perceived as an inevitable stage of anyone’s life, for almost all of us. Thus I feel that there should be a collective effort made without further waste of time by each one of us, towards this humanitarian cause.

It must be the moral duty of every Minister and every Ministry to make buildings coming under them accessible to all under fast track scheme.

We earnestly request Daily News to closely follow-up matters and make our decision makers to act on fast track and make accessibility to all a reality.

I firmly believe that ‘Mahinda Chintana’, would no more allow our society to further experience, as perceived many years ago by the renowned poet Thomas Gray, “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desert air”.

S.N.K.P (Talahena)