Accidents involving wheelchair users on buses are so frequent that the Control Yuan has instructed the Ministry of Transportation and Communications to review the situation.
The Taiwan Association for Disability Rights calls on the government to comply with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, whose terms have binding legal force in Taiwan. The government should introduce legislation so that public transport companies would only be granted a license by the ministry for a new vehicle if it meets standards that enable mobility-impaired passengers to get on and off easily.
A Control Yuan report said that the government has over the past five years provided NT$4.2 billion (US$13.5 million) in subsidies for operators to purchase barrier-free buses. Many operators have been doing their best to cooperate with this policy. The next task should be to take steps toward writing this policy into law, and the ministry is duty-bound to so. On no account should the progress made over many years be allowed to slip away because administrative departments move too slowly.
The ministry should make business licenses subject to the standards, thus pushing more operators to catch up and comply. This is the only way to insure that the effort the government and cooperating operators have made over many years does not go to waste. Applying these standards across the board would make operators play by the same rules, making for fair competition.
Steps must be taken to greet the arrival of an aging society. The urban-rural gap should be narrowed so that disabled people everywhere in Taiwan can use public transport. The ministry is duty-bound to make this happen.
The labor rights of bus drivers must also be protected. Their tasks include deploying ramps for wheelchair users getting on and off buses.
The association has repeatedly called upon the ministry to set standards for passenger waiting areas. Although Taiwan has standards governing signage and markings, there is no uniform standard for waiting areas. If waiting areas are too high above road level, electric accessibility ramps might not be deployable. The ministry clearly knows about this situation, but has done nothing.
The association once again calls upon Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) to resolve this simple problem.
What is the average life for buses in general service? The state has paid operators NT$4.2 billion over five years in subsidies to buy new buses, but not even 10 percent of highway and freeway buses are barrier-free. This is not good enough.
Many countries have long since incorporated the aim of making all public transportation barrier-free through sunrise legislation. If the ministry continues to disregard the UN’s provisions, the association will submit another complaint to the Control Yuan, asking it to investigate whether officials have neglected their duty so that the process of making Taiwan’s public transport barrier-free has been delayed, reducing the urban-rural transport accessibility gap.
If so, the bureaucrats in the government agencies should be disciplined accordingly.
Liu Chun-ling is managing director of the Taiwan Association for Disability Rights.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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