A busy man on his way home from work has been circling the parking lot for a while. Irate, he pulls into the disabled parking bay, making sure to give the car guard a good tip to keep his illegal action on the low down.
A busy man on his way home from work has been circling the parking lot for a while. Irate, he pulls into the disabled parking bay, making sure to give the car guard a good tip to keep his illegal action on the low down.
What he doesn’t realise is that someone else has just seen the able bodied man vacate his car – a disabled someone in a wheelchair who will be driving around for a long time before he can enjoy his legal right to that parking bay.
It’s not about the location of the parking bay. The problem for those in wheelchairs is not so much the distance from the shop, but the width of the bay. It is impossible for them to use a normal sized bay because a wheelchair cannot fit between the cars.
That extra width is essential for them to do their shopping – there is nowhere else for them to park.
This is why the Quadpara Association of South Africa (QASA) has found a way to give disabled citizens, a voice. It asks that anyone witnessing this form of abuse whatsapp photos of cars committing the offence to QASA, which will then contact the owners of the vehicles, sensitise them to the issue and ask them to mend their ways.
Ari Seirlis, the chief executive officer of QASA, told Grocott’s Mail in a telephone interview that so far they had received a very positive response to their campaign. However, it consumes a lot of energy and comes at a great logistical cost. But Seirlis says that they feel they owe it to people in wheelchairs.
"Those parking bays are not there for just anyone with a disability," he stressed, "We at QASA believe they are there only for those in wheelchairs, because it’s about width, not location.”
Seirlis says it happens a lot at shopping centres, aided by the tendency to tip car guards to keep quiet. When commenting on QASA’s efforts to combat the situation, Catherine Letcher, from the Association for the Physically Disabled (APD), said it was very important to have campaigns like QASA's.
She said she definitely thought it would be successful. Francine Mwepu, also of APD, said, “Those parking bays are there for the physically disabled, and it’s unfair for them not to have that access.”
The Whatsapp reporting number is: 073 853 9675.
