An appalling case of neglect
Bangkok Post editorial, 16 December 2006
There has been no shortage of complaints about the facilities at Suvarnabhumi Airport and the corrupt practices involved in building it. Much of the blame for both belongs to the politicians who ordered it to be opened for full service before it was ready.
This premature birth guaranteed that the glitches that would normally plague any huge new technical operation of this complexity would be greatly increased and, sure enough, they were. The scarcity of seats and toilets, inadequate signposting and lighting, mismarked baggage conveyor belts, rampant pestering touts, arrival hall crush, taxi mismanagement, lax security, poor working conditions for immigration staff and uncontrolled noise pollution, among other things, were all so predictable they could easily have been averted by proper planning before, instead of panic measures after, the airport opened. Just observing passenger flows at Don Muang would have pinpointed obvious problem areas. What we can take great comfort in is that there have been no safety issues. A lack of professionalism might be evident in some aspects of the airport management, but not in the air traffic control and ''airside'' ground control operations. These controllers are the best in the business and the on-time arrival and departure times speak for themselves.
But no praise is due to those who skimped on such modern-day necessities as attending to the needs of disabled passengers, many of them tourists. The opinions and recommendations made by representatives of the disabled during the airport design and construction phases appear to have been largely ignored. This is in total contrast to the disabled-friendly subway system where everyone worked together and succeeded in getting it right.
So what happened at Suvarnabhumi? Why are toilets for the disabled located at the back of restrooms where wheelchair users experience great difficulty in getting to them? Why were their concerns that parts of the walkways were hazardous because they were slippery apparently not acted on? Why did no representative of the now-deposed Thaksin government consult with representatives of the disabled, despite many requests, to help plan the special facilities needed? And why did representatives of the disabled get so desperate they felt they had to resort to filing a lawsuit in the Administrative Court against those politicians who had neglected their plight?
The group behind this action, led by Lt-Col Torpong Kulkhanchit, chief of the Asia-Pacific Office of the International Handicapped Organisation, says it was fed up with having its petitions and requests ignored and worried about the dangers. It cited certain air-conditioning vents in the passenger terminal as constituting a hazard to children and those with poor vision as there were neither warning signs nor detectable special floor tiles with tactile surfaces to alert people. They also expressed concern about the stairs in the terminal having steel-wire guard rails with gaps they said were big enough for a child to slip through and the lack of any transport service at the airport specifically catering to the needs of the disabled.
The Association of the Disabled of Thailand predicts the airport will fail its first big test when the country hosts the 9th Asian ParaGames next year if faults are not fixed in time. They may well be because attitudes have changed since the coup and efforts are now being made to rectify all the costly blunders that could so easily have been avoided.
This is of particular relevance this week because on Tuesday Thailand, to its great credit, voted to support a United Nations convention to protect the rights of some 650 million people around the world with disabilities. The pact, regarded as the first major human rights treaty this century, will come into force when 20 of the 192 UN member states ratify it.
There is an enormous amount of work to be done to meet the standards required of the disabled-friendly nation we aspire to be. And, if we want to learn from our mistakes, we need go no further than the airport to find out how.
There has been no shortage of complaints about the facilities at Suvarnabhumi Airport and the corrupt practices involved in building it. Much of the blame for both belongs to the politicians who ordered it to be opened for full service before it was ready.
This premature birth guaranteed that the glitches that would normally plague any huge new technical operation of this complexity would be greatly increased and, sure enough, they were. The scarcity of seats and toilets, inadequate signposting and lighting, mismarked baggage conveyor belts, rampant pestering touts, arrival hall crush, taxi mismanagement, lax security, poor working conditions for immigration staff and uncontrolled noise pollution, among other things, were all so predictable they could easily have been averted by proper planning before, instead of panic measures after, the airport opened. Just observing passenger flows at Don Muang would have pinpointed obvious problem areas. What we can take great comfort in is that there have been no safety issues. A lack of professionalism might be evident in some aspects of the airport management, but not in the air traffic control and ''airside'' ground control operations. These controllers are the best in the business and the on-time arrival and departure times speak for themselves.
But no praise is due to those who skimped on such modern-day necessities as attending to the needs of disabled passengers, many of them tourists. The opinions and recommendations made by representatives of the disabled during the airport design and construction phases appear to have been largely ignored. This is in total contrast to the disabled-friendly subway system where everyone worked together and succeeded in getting it right.
So what happened at Suvarnabhumi? Why are toilets for the disabled located at the back of restrooms where wheelchair users experience great difficulty in getting to them? Why were their concerns that parts of the walkways were hazardous because they were slippery apparently not acted on? Why did no representative of the now-deposed Thaksin government consult with representatives of the disabled, despite many requests, to help plan the special facilities needed? And why did representatives of the disabled get so desperate they felt they had to resort to filing a lawsuit in the Administrative Court against those politicians who had neglected their plight?
The group behind this action, led by Lt-Col Torpong Kulkhanchit, chief of the Asia-Pacific Office of the International Handicapped Organisation, says it was fed up with having its petitions and requests ignored and worried about the dangers. It cited certain air-conditioning vents in the passenger terminal as constituting a hazard to children and those with poor vision as there were neither warning signs nor detectable special floor tiles with tactile surfaces to alert people. They also expressed concern about the stairs in the terminal having steel-wire guard rails with gaps they said were big enough for a child to slip through and the lack of any transport service at the airport specifically catering to the needs of the disabled.
The Association of the Disabled of Thailand predicts the airport will fail its first big test when the country hosts the 9th Asian ParaGames next year if faults are not fixed in time. They may well be because attitudes have changed since the coup and efforts are now being made to rectify all the costly blunders that could so easily have been avoided.
This is of particular relevance this week because on Tuesday Thailand, to its great credit, voted to support a United Nations convention to protect the rights of some 650 million people around the world with disabilities. The pact, regarded as the first major human rights treaty this century, will come into force when 20 of the 192 UN member states ratify it.
There is an enormous amount of work to be done to meet the standards required of the disabled-friendly nation we aspire to be. And, if we want to learn from our mistakes, we need go no further than the airport to find out how.
posted by Bob Boonhod at 12/16/2006 10:00:00 AM
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