Khaleej Times explores how wheel-chair friendly are cities in the UAE.
Published: Sat 8 Aug 2015, 12:00 AM
Last updated: Sun 9 Aug 2015, 8:50 AM
If you have been living in the UAE for over a decade, you might say there has been a rise in the number of wheelchair-bound elderly and the disabled visiting public places.
A few years ago, their presence was not felt anywhere as if such a population did not exist. Reasons are aplenty for this unexpected confidence among the elderly to come out of their safe zones. They are more confident now to move around, and empowered to explore cities, thanks to initiatives from the authorities.
Khaleej Times team reached out to residents of Dubai, Ras Al Khaimah and Abu Dhabi to know the general mood of the public; about the problems they face while they take their wheelchair-bound dear-ones out.
Meet mother of Reem
When we met Reem, an Emirati, on a sunny evening at The Walk in Dubai, she was manoeuvering her mother's wheelchair towards a juice kiosk. Reem's mother lives in Abu Dhabi with her daughter and son-in-law, a government official in Abu Dhabi. Her mum likes beaches and one of the factors that determine outings for her mother is wheelchair access in parts of the city.
Wheelchairs for hireTourists who visit malls are not always up to walking the long stretches. Here's where hiring wheelchairs come in handy. A person may not be disabled, but simply unable or disinclined to walk too much. Although malls have guest services - wheelchairs, baby buggies, and first aid - most people with an elderly parent like to not take a chance with their mother/father/relative. What if the mall has already leased out its wheelchairs? So people reserve in advance.
At the Life Pharmacy in Dubai's Al Wasl Square, about five wheelchairs are hired a day. Wheelchairs can be booked two to three days in advance. Reportedly, the number of customers is also quite high.
So, if a person needs a wheelchair, he will have to pay a cash deposit of Dh400 + Dh15 per day for the leased chair. There are five to six types of chairs available for lease: basic, leg elevating, electric, and rolling walkers.
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Reem happened to be an interpreter for her mother who speaks only Arabic. The mother told Reem to convey her thoughts to Khaleej Times:
She doesn't like to go to the malls as she finds them too crowded, and she feels it is challenging for her daughter to manage so many things - the kids, home and a parent in a wheel chair. But she loves beaches.
Reem said: "It is not such a challenge to wheel her here at the beach, as there is space, there are drop cuts in the pavement, and the way the stones are laid, it is easy to move the wheelchair".
So once in a while, they drive down to Jumeirah Beach Residence (JBR), have a meal and stroll about JBR.
The newer parts of town, she says, are more sensitive to the needs of people with different needs. Earlier, it wasn't so.
On the same Sunday evening at the beach, Reem said she had seen at least four other people on wheelchairs.
"I don't see so many in malls. I don't know if it is an access problem. Maybe disabled people just find the environment in a mall to be stressful for them."
Infants and toddlers being wheeled around in buggies have many of the same access-issues.
Motivated to do something
Business woman Sarah (name changed), resident of the UAE for the past 14 years (first in Abu Dhabi and in Dubai now for the last five), needed a wheelchair for her mum when she was visiting. Sarah couldn't find one, and had to shell out Dh500 to buy one from a nearby hospital. That gave her the idea to start a business. She began to lease wheelchairs to people who needed them for only a short while, as in her case, for a visiting parent.
Today, Sarah leases out wheelchairs to people who need them. She believes the has situation certainly improved.
"It used to be a nightmare for people on wheelchairs when I first moved to the UAE," she added.
There has been a lot of change, and for the better, she says.
Janice Kurien, mother of a two-year-old finds the Dubai Metro very convenient for her son's pram.?"The lift is nice and spacious also, two prams can easily fit."
She says when she first came to Dubai three years ago from Madurai, India, she was "hugely impressed" at one Metro gate being wider - for wheelchairs/baby strollers.
Efforts in RAK
The northern emirate of Ras Al Khaimah is 75 per cent wheelchair-friendly in terms of access to places, ramps, accessories, infrastructure, and parking.
Shaikha Elham Al Qassimi, manager of the RAK Rehabilitation Centre, said its staff and specialists have visited government departments such as the RAK police, courts and immigration, to assess how friendly they are to people with mobile and multiple disabilities.
She said: "The centre has launched two initiatives for the benefit of people with physical and multiple disabilities since 2013."
Khalil Suliman Khalifa, a physiotherapist with the RAK Rehabilitation Centre, told Khaleej Times that some departments are not friendly to people with mobile impairment and special needs. "But most of them have taken our advice and amended their infrastructure, and specified some lifts, bathrooms, parking lots, cashiers and counters for them."
The centre ensures a proper environment at home for people with physical or multiple impairments.
"If the houses of special needs people are not proper, the centre specialists fit them with suitable ramps, handles, and accessories, and amend the toilets and entrances if needed," he added.
In Abu Dhabi
According to residents, the situation is different from Dubai and Ras Al Khaimah in the national capital. Most pedestrian underpasses in Abu Dhabi are built with only stairs and lack ramps. This makes life difficult for people on wheelchairs and with baby prams to roll down and up to the other side of the road.
"Crossing a road with a baby pram is very difficult here. Every time I go shopping from across my residence on Hamdan Street, I need the support of passers-by to help me carry my baby with the pram to cross the road because there is no ramp in the pedestrian underpass," said Aisha Mustafa.
The centre of the city, especially, lacks ramps on pedestrian underpasses - Hamdan Street, Khalifa Street and Electra Street - the very heart of the Capital.
Another resident, Buthaina Bakheith, who lives on Electra Street (officially Shaikh Zayed the Second Street), said: "For shopping I prefer walking to driving. But when I shop and return home, I have to seek the assistance of two workers at the mall to carry the shopping trawler to cross the road in the pedestrian underpass."
Bakheith said the civic departments ought to have considered these factors before they constructed these underpasses. People have not chouce other than to walk more than 500m to a traffic signal while pushing baby prams, wheelchairs or shopping trawlers.
Father of two, Abdul Ghani Syed, an Omani banker, says most of the well-built underpasses are out of the city and are least used.
"In our neighbourhood there is only one pedestrian underpass with a ramp - on Muroor Road opposite Madinat Zayed Shopping Centre, and that is least used by the public. Most of these ramp facilitated underpasses are outside of the city. The civic authorities must do something for the improvement of the passages for the benefit of residents in the heart of the city".
He added that underpasses are flooded with water most of the time due to the poor sewage network. At night some of them are not lit.
Civic authorities across the emirates need a deeper degree of sensitisation, residents feel. Because while some areas are plush, nicely developed, and ergonomically very sound, the need of the hour is uniform development, so that people in wheelchairs don't think twice about heading out.
5-pillar project in Dubai
Dubai has made strides when it comes to wheelchair accessibility across the city based on its vision of becoming a disability friendly city by 2020. However, Dr Alya Al Qassimi, director, Social Care & Inclusion Department of the Community Development Authority (CDA), said: "Wheelchair accessibility has progressed by leaps and bounds in the past few years. However, we are seeing great accessibility in the more popular areas such as malls and Metro stations, less populated sites lacking the required accessibility," she told Khaleej Times.
Dr Al Qassimi said just a few years ago it was "uncommon" to see a wheelchair-bound resident out in public, but today, we see these people move about independently.
"This shows we are moving on. We want to see people in wheelchairs everywhere. We want them to be where we are. One of the government's strategic goals is cohesion - removing those barriers, so we have a legal framework to abide by to make this happen."
Part of this framework includes the five pillars project which looks at: Rehabilitation; Social Promotion; Education; Employment; and Universal Design. These five pillars fall under the government-backed project 'Dubai's Strategy for People with Disabilities', with the Universal Design pillar headed by a task force from the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA).
"Its aim is to promote ease of access to people in the Emirate with special needs. We want to alleviate the problems people in wheelchairs are still facing, and slowly but surely the issue is being addressed," Al Qassimi said.
With the CDA holding regular focus groups with the special needs community, including wheelchair-bound residents, she said it is a process that needs to be "walked through" with those that are experiencing the difficulties first hand.
reporters@khaleejtimes.com
(with inputs from Ahmed Shaaban, Kelly Clarke)
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