Blind face discrimination in public transit system

By Primastuti Handayani

JAKARTA (JP): Jakarta's public transportation is not friendly to physically handicapped people, a group of blind people said yesterday.

About 80 blind men and women of all ages aired their grievances about the way they are treated by public transport operators, particularly bus drivers, during a meeting with Dimmy Kirbrandiman, a senior official of the Jakarta City Land Transportation and Traffic Control Office.

They appealed to the authorities to train bus and taxi drivers how to provide services to the physically handicapped.

"I always have trouble every time I want to travel around the city," said Furkhon, one of the blind participants in the meeting. "The buses won't stop, even when the driver knows that the passenger is blind."

Edy Suryanto said a bus driver once got angry with a fellow passenger who tried to help him onto the bus. "They really think that we are a burden to them," he said. "The funny thing is that they always refuse our money."

"Don't give us a free ride out of pity. We can afford to pay the fare," he added.

Edy said bus drivers always call him "a snail" because he does not board buses quickly. "I cannot chase after the bus as fast as people who can see," he said.

Another blind man, Sugiyo, said that even Jakarta's taxi drivers are neither trained nor equipped to deal with the blind.

Many taxi drivers are reluctant to give a ride to blind people because they fear they will be bothersome, he said.

The discussion at the Jaya Ancol Youth Hostel was jointly sponsored by the Jakarta branch of the Indonesian Association of Blind People and the Students' Association of the Special Education division of the Jakarta Teachers Training Institute.

Provision

Dimmy acknowledged that the city's public transport policies do not include special provisions for physically handicapped people. He said that taxi drivers are already provided with training on how to serve foreign visitors but admitted that so such programs exist for the handicapped.

Dimmy said the city administration is currently drafting a series of provisions in its traffic and public transport policy to cater to the needs of handicapped people, as mandated by the 1992 Traffic Law.

These include the construction of sidewalks on all roads with a standard height of 13 millimeters, the introduction of loudspeakers which beep at zebra-crossings, the introduction of textured zebra crossings and of "talking bus stops", he said.

The "talking bus stops" will provide information about the buses' numbers and routes and their arrival and departure times, he added.