The persons with reduced mobility should be actively engaged in the process of taking decisions concerning pedestrian accessibility and laying out of public places in the municipality of Chisinau. The Chisinau City Hall holds consultations, but it is important to ensure active participation for the given persons to test the routes and to state their opinions, while the authorities should take these opinions into account. This is the message of the Center for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and of the Civic Platform “Chisinau Accessible to All”.
“Even if we saw openness on the part of the authorities, the solution and method in which access can be ensured should be assessed by those who will cover the whole road. This way, both the persons with locomotor disabilities, parents with children using carriages and older persons went along all the roads and stated their opinions on the barriers they faced and that should be removed. Let’s consider that this is a beneficial and important process,” Galina Klimov, executive director of the Alliance of Organizations for Persons with Disabilities, stated in a news conference at IPN.
Executive director of the Public Association “Motivație” Ludmila Iachim spoke about the opportunity of actively involving persons with reduced mobility when decisions about the way public places in the city will be arranged are taken. The persons with reduced mobility and the civil society organizations that represent them know the problem from inside and can be useful, but the authorities continue to take decisions without taking their opinions into account. “The involvement of civil society is very important in such processes,” said Ludmila Iachim, who is confined to a wheelchair.
In the same news conference, Marina Buga, division head of the Social Assistance and Health Division, said that the Chisinau City Hall set the goal of working out a local accessibility document. They do not challenge the role played by the examinations performed by the NGO sector. On the contrary, these are very important and the document that is to be designed will be a key item on the agenda of the Consulttaive Council centering on the situation of persons with disabilities that was set up under the mayor general.
According to the National House of Social Insurance, in Moldova there are 175,000 persons with disabilities and over 10,000 of them are children younger than 17.
Note: IPN News Agency gives the right of reply to persons who consider they were touched by the news items produced based on statements of the organizers of the given news conference, including by facilitating the organization of another news conference in similar conditions.
