| Disabled in Delhi hold angry protests, demand rights
New Delhi, Sep 19 (ANI): Dozens of physically and mentally challenged people, affiliated to the Action for Disability Development and Inclusion (AADI) and the Disabled Rights Group (DRG) today organized a protest outside the office of the Planning Commission here, to demand their rights. They demanded their rightful due in the Eleventh Five Year Plan, to be implemented from 2007. The protestors expressed their frustration over Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia meeting other groups and not them. The protest however, ended in a scuffle with the police. Javed Abidi, the wheelchair bound convenor of the Disabled Rights Group, who now directs the National Centre for the Promotion of Employment for Disabled People, based in New Delhi, warned the protests would be stepped up if the voices of the disabled remained unheard.
Disabled hit the buffers
A GRANDMOTHER has spoken out about the lack of provision for wheelchair users at a train station and The Comet can reveal only one out of seven stations investigated in Comet country has step-free access to all platforms.Wendy Crawley, of Wilbury Road, Letchworth GC, is angry her 18-year-old granddaughter - who she did not wish to name - cannot board a train at Letchworth GC station because there is no working lift there.Mrs Crawley said: "There is no access to the platform for the disabled."They run a taxi to the nearest station with a lift, which is usually Stevenage, but that's discrimination and people should be treated the same. .
SCAT cuts make disabled into unwilling homebodies
Sheila Trexler's parents live on the opposite side of Guilford County from her home at Bell House, a center for disabled adults near the old Carolina Circle Mall on Summit Avenue. But they might as well live on the other side of the world.
"I'm only getting home once a year because I have no way to get there," she said.
Trexler can't visit her parents' home because it sits outside - just outside - the official city limits, a point beyond which the SCAT bus she uses for transportation will not venture. Instead her parents visit her at Bell House and sometimes they meet closer to town, at the Wal-Mart on Wendover Avenue or the Four Seasons Mall.
Trexler, like many of the other Bell House residents, uses a motorized wheelchair to get around. Her disability hasn't kept her from securing a job at Wal-Mart, where she works three or four times a week, or participating at Reedy Fork Baptist Church.
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