PWDs lament difficulties in accessing airports, other facilities

Persons with disabilities have cried out that they are finding it difficult to access airports and other public facilities in the country, describing the situation as discrimination and denial of their rights. Coalition of disabilities organizations, in partnership with Centre for Citizens with Disabilities, Spinal Cord Injury Association and Hope Alive for Possibilities Initiative yesterday […]

Persons with disabilities have cried out that they are finding it difficult to access airports and other public facilities in the country, describing the situation as discrimination and denial of their rights.

Coalition of disabilities organizations, in partnership with Centre for Citizens with Disabilities, Spinal Cord Injury Association and Hope Alive for Possibilities Initiative yesterday at a forum in Jos, said access to airport or airline facilities and services for the purpose of air traveling, was very significant, but individuals with disabilities’ rights are flagrantly overlooked.

Executive chairman, Plateau State Disability Right Commission, Kyennan Minzin, while speaking on the matter, said, “Whenever we find ourselves at the airport, we find it difficult to get access to the facilities like the way other people are getting them. There is no elevator provided for us. We have to be lifted together with our wheelchairs. We can’t also get access to toilets and important facilities.

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He said there have been numerous accounts of outright denial of air travel rights of persons with disabilities not to talk of humiliation and degrading responses of their requests.

David Obinna, Executive Director, Centre for Citizens with Disabilities, said the event was to sensitize stakeholders to understand the difficulties they faced and find how to find solutions to them.