A park in Sijhih City (汐止), Taipei County, drew criticism from activists recently because it bans wheelchairs.
Under the pseudonym Zuo Peng (左芃), the mother of a girl who depends on a wheelchair posted an article on her blog at the end of last month saying her daughter was blocked from entering the Sijhih Sports Park because she was in a wheelchair.
“One negative thing about this park that was built for the public is that it puts dogs and wheels in the same category. Dogs and anything with wheels — wheelchair, cart, buggy, bicycle, scooter or tricycle — are all prohibited from entering” as a sign outside the park entrance states, Zuo wrote.
“This is a typical case of discrimination and lack of awareness about people with disabilities,” she said, adding that while most people can leave their wheels outside the park, only people on wheelchairs are completely excluded.
Zuo said that when she protested to park administrators, they said it would look bad if there were wheelchairs in the park and suggested the complaint should be directed to the park’s designers.
Zuo said she and her daughter “left the place feeling discriminated against and humiliated.”
However, more humiliation came when she filed a complaint with the county government.
The county’s Public Works Bureau said the rule followed a set of Sijhih regulations on the management of parks and public spaces. It went on to say that the park was built to be “used by the regular public for sports purposes, hence the entries of pets and physically challenged individuals are not recommended, in order to ensure the safety of the regular public and the physically challenged.”
Zuo said the reply upset her.
“What kind of logic is it to say that people on wheelchairs would threaten the safety of ‘the regular public’ so the ‘regular public’ may stay in the park, while people on wheelchairs and pets should be kept out?” Zuo said. “I wonder what these officials, park designers and public servants have in mind when they think of people on wheelchairs? If this isn’t discrimination, what is it?”
Citing clauses in the Act for Protecting the Interests of the Physically and Mentally Disabled (身心障礙者權益保障法), which stipulates that people with disabilities should have equal rights using facilities in public places, Organizations for the Disabled secretary-general Wang Yu-ling (王幼玲) said the county and city governments were violating the law and treating people with disabilities as second-class citizens.
“They should apologize and revise the park regulations,” Wang said.
County Public Works Bureau official Hsieh Wen-huang (謝文徨) said they replied according to regulation and had no intention to humiliate or to discriminate, and added the bureau would apologize to Zuo.
Sijhih City official Chiang Chang-liu (江長流) said the rule was made to protect the pavement on the tracks and promised to revise the wording of the sign to avoid misunderstandings in the future.
Taiwanese scientists have engineered plants that can capture about 50 percent more carbon dioxide and produce more than twice as many seeds as unmodified plants, a breakthrough they hope could one day help mitigate global warming and grow more food staples such as rice. If applied to major food crops, the new system could cut carbon emissions and raise yields “without additional equipment or labor costs,” Academia Sinica researcher and lead author the study Lu Kuan-jen (呂冠箴) said. Academia Sinica president James Liao (廖俊智) said that as humans emit 9.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide compared with the 220 billion tonnes absorbed
The Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Wanda-Zhonghe Line is 81.7 percent complete, with public opening targeted for the end of 2027, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said today. Surrounding roads are to be open to the public by the end of next year, Hou said during an inspection of construction progress. The 9.5km line, featuring nine underground stations and one depot, is expected to connect Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Station to Chukuang Station in New Taipei City’s Jhonghe District (中和). All 18 tunnels for the line are complete, while the main structures of the stations and depot are mostly finished, he
Taipei is to implement widespread road closures around Taipei 101 on Friday to make way for large crowds during the Double Ten National Day celebration, the Taipei Department of Transportation said. A four-minute fireworks display is to be launched from the skyscraper, along with a performance by 500 drones flying in formation above the nearby Nanshan A21 site, starting at 10pm. Vehicle restrictions would occur in phases, they said. From 5pm to 9pm, inner lanes of Songshou Road between Taipei City Hall and Taipei 101 are to be closed, with only the outer lanes remaining open. Between 9pm and 9:40pm, the section is
China’s plan to deploy a new hypersonic ballistic missile at a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) base near Taiwan likely targets US airbases and ships in the western Pacific, but it would also present new threats to Taiwan, defense experts said. The New York Times — citing a US Department of Defense report from last year on China’s military power — on Monday reported in an article titled “The missiles threatening Taiwan” that China has stockpiled 3,500 missiles, 1.5 times more than four years earlier. Although it is unclear how many of those missiles were targeting Taiwan, the newspaper reported
RSS