Access deliberately denied

Malta is littered with public buildings that are not accessible to people with a disability. They include government offices, shops, places of entertainment and various other spots of interest to common people.

Common people is just what people with a disability would like to be. Children of no lesser God, through birth, accident or illness they are made different to others. They learn to live with their difference. To many of them such difference becomes a spur, a dynamic for determined action not to allow it to impede them in achieving what other people can do.

People with a disability to a considerable extent fight their own particular battle. They do it with hope and pride. Often they do it too with the assistance of the love and care poured upon them by their dear ones and close friends. They do much, yet they cannot do it all.

Society has to recognise that it has to make some adjustments to remove obstacles that people with a disability cannot tackle on their own. That is why, among other things, in 2000 Parliament honed a particular piece of legislation intended to address some of the requirements by people with a disability which could only be seen to on a collective basis.

The Equal Opportunities (People with a Disability) Act sought to smooth the path of life disturbed by disability.

Among other things, the Equal Opportunities Act makes it a requirement for proper access to be provided to people with a disability, including those who use wheelchairs, in new public buildings and in previously existing buildings whose owners or operators apply for a permit to make modifications in them.

The Act recognised the National Commission for People with a Disability as the body best suited to oversee pertinent provisions of the legislation, including that concerning physical access, within the broader access to enable people with a disability to have access to the opportunities of life in general.

On this and all of its other responsibilities the commission, chaired by the inimitable and indefatigable Joe Camilleri, assisted by commission director Freddy Portelli and their fellow commission members and employees, focuses with intent and total commitment. Sadly, not even that is nearly enough.

The commission cannot be everywhere. Its legal powers are clear but its reach is not determined by those powers and its members' determination to see them implemented. Parts of society create fresh obstacles to the effective use of those powers, and so the effective removal of non-self obstacles to people with a disability.

One could quote various examples but the latest included in the commission's latest annual report suffices. The report reveals that only about half of the new public buildings vetted by the commission last year were deemed to be accessible to people with a disability, including wheelchair users. The figure and proportion, 21 out of 45 buildings vetted, compared badly with the outcome of the previous year, when 54 of 57 buildings inspected complied with the requirements of the Equal Opportunities Act enough to be cleared by the commission.

The failure ratio is remarkable. It does not show that the commission was more demanding in 2008 - it works with maximum concentration year in year out. What the percentage of failures shows, therefore, is that a number of developers and their architects were insensitive or not sensitive enough both to their legal obligations and to the need of people with a disability related to physical access to buildings.

Not remarkable, one might say, swathes of the private sector have long been in breach of legal obligations relating to people with a disability when the sector comes to recruit employees. More remarkable still, I feel, is the Malta Environment and Planning Authority.

It is that authority which is tasked to issue building permits and oversees their proper implementation. The fact that the Commission for People with a Disability found that 20 out of 45 developers did not provide adequate disability access suggests that the overseeing by Mepa went well astray during 2008. The authority will have its own tale to tell. It had better include details of what remedial action it took to make recalcitrant developers fall into line with their legal obligations, and to ensure that there is no such slippage in future.

A couple of months ago access for people with a disability should have been more in the news when the commission organised a national day on the subject. I was privileged to be invited to take part along with Social Policy Minister John Dalli and other contributors. Camilleri and I shared an old joke with a knowing smile - the media, or a fraction of them, cover such events for what a participating minister has to say. The rest of the contributions are ignored. And so it came to pass again.

More recently, the issue of physical access to people with a disability did catch the eyes of the media. Roberta Magri, an 18-year-old incensed that she could not access a certain cinema of her choice, wrote to the Prime Minister about it. Lawrence Gonzi, who became actively committed to the rights of people with a disability well before he turned into a politician, would not have been pleased. He can show his displeasure quite effectively by demanding that Mepa not only explain what happened during 2008, but undertake to carry out their role much more effectively so people with a disability can access public buildings.