AirAsia, Wheelchair Users And Indemnity Form: The Ongoing Saga
With no satisfactory official response forthcoming from AirAsia regarding the policy of imposing indemnity form on wheelchair users after more than two months, I decided to refer my complaint to the Minister of Transport Dato’ Sri Chan Kong Choy and the Minister of Women, Family and Community Development Dato’ Sri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil.
The complaint was sent via email just now and hardcopies will posted to the respective ministers and three other persons in the carbon copy list, namely Senator Prof Datuk Dr. Ismail Md Salleh, Society of Orthopaedically Handicapped Malaysia President Dr. Tiun Ling Ta and Malaysian Spinal Injuries Association President Dr. Rahim bin Noor. I am a member of both organisations. Not long after the email was sent, Ministry of Transport Secretary General Dato’ Haji Zakaria Hj Bahari forwarded the mail to AirAsia CEO Datuk Tony Fernandez asking him to take action accordingly.
Below is the content of my complaint letter:
4 Januari, 2008
Y.B. Dato’ Sri Chan Kong Choy Melalui emel dan pos
Menteri Pengangkutan
Blok D5, Kompleks D
Pusat Pentadbiran Kerajaan Persekutuan
62616 PutrajayaY. B. Dato’ Sri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil Melalui emel dan pos
Menteri Pembangunan Wanita, Keluarga dan Masyarakat
Aras 1-6, Blok E
Kompleks Pejabat Kerajaan Bukit Perdana
Jalan Dato’ Onn
50515 Kuala LumpurDato’ Sri Chan dan Dato’ Sri Shahrizat,
PER: DISKRIMINASI TERDAHAP PENUMPANG YANG MENGGUNA KERUSI RODA OLEH AIRASIA
Saya ingin membuat aduan tentang perkara di atas yang telah berlaku pada diri saya.
1. Pada 30 Oktober 2007, saya bersama isteri saya telah daftar masuk di Lapangan Terbangan Antarabangsa Kota Kinabalu untuk menaiki penerbangan AirAsia AK 5107 ke Kuala Lumpur. Saya adalah pengguna kerusi roda.
2. Seorang pegawai AirAsia meminta saya menandatangani borang lepas tanggungan (Release and Indemnity). Antara fasal yang terkandung di dalam borang itu adalah:
- AirAsia tidak akan bertanggungjawab sekiranya berlaku apa-apa pada diri saya semasa penerbangan.
- Saya bersetuju menanggung segala perbelanjaan AirAsia yang mungkin disebabkan oleh diri saya dalam penerbangan tersebut.
- Saya telah menandatangani borang itu secara sukarela .3. Saya telah membantah dengan sekerasnya dan meminta perkara ini dirujuk kepada pihak pengurusan AirAsia di Kuala Lumpur sebab perbuatan yang mewajibkan saya menandatangani borang itu adalah diskriminasi terhadap saya sebagai seorang pengguna kerusi roda.
4. Setelah pegawai itu merujuk kepada pengurusnya, saya diberitahu bahawa sekiranya saya tidak menandatangani borang tersebut, saya tidak akan dibenarkan menaiki pesawat. Saya tidak mempunyai pilihan kecuali menandatangani borang tersebut untuk dibenarkan menaiki pesawat kembali ke Kuala Lumpur. Apabila menandatangani borang tersebut, saya juga telah menulis dengan huruf besar yang terang bahawa saya membantah perbuatan tersebut. Salinan borang tersebut dilampirkan.
5. Saya telah memaklumkan kejadian tersebut kepada Datuk Tony Fernandez dan Encik Bo Lingam dari AirAsia melalui emel. Maklumbalas dari kedua-dua mereka sungguh tidak memuaskan. Sehingga kini, selepas dua bulan, pihak AirAsia masih belum memberi penerangan yang munasabah mengenai syarat ini kecuali mengatakan bahawa ia adalah syarat dari syarikat insurans mereka. Alasan ini tidak boleh diterima kerana Malaysia Airlines tidak mengenakan syarat ini keatas pengguna kerusi roda kecuali satu kesilapan di Jepun di mana Profesor Yutaka Takamine diminta mendandatangani surat lepas tanggungan. Malaysia Airlines telah pun meminta maaf kepada Profesor Yutaka seperti yang Dato’ Sri-Dato’ Sri sudah dimaklumkan.
6. Saya telah menghadiri kursus “Independent Living Program for People with Disabilities” di Jepun dan Thailand pada 2006 yang dianjurkan bersama oleh Jabatan Kebajikan Masyarakat Malaysia dan Japan International Cooperation Agency. Dalam penerbangan ke kursus-kursus tersebut dengan Japan Airlines dan Malaysia Airlines, saya tidak diminta untuk menandatangani borang lepas tanggungan. Saya juga telah menghadiri 7th Disabled Peoples’ International World Assembly dan Global Summit on Independent Living di Korea baru-baru ini sebagai speaker untuk kedua-dua perhimpunan tersebut dengan penerbangan Malaysia Airlines dan juga tidak diminta untuk menandatangi borang tersebut.
7. Saya ingin merujuk kepada cadangan daripada 18 pertubuhan OKU yang diserahkan kepada Dato’ Sri Chan pada mesyuarat di Kementerian Pengangkutan pada 12 Mac 2007 di mana kami meminta supaya syarat yang mewajipkan pengguna kerusi roda menandatangani surat lepas tanggunan yang diamalkan oleh syarikat penerbangan dilarang sama sekali. Salinan cadangan tersebut dilampirkan.
8. Syarat yang diskriminasi ini melanggar hak asasi saya. Saya berharap Dato’ Sri Chan dan Dato’ Sri Shahrizat akan mengambil tindakan dengan segera supaya perkara yang sebegini tidak berlaku lagi. Ia juga untuk memelihara hak OKU yang termaktub dalam Rang Undang-Undang Orang Kurang Upaya 2007 dan Konvensyen Mengenai Hak Orang Kurang Upaya (Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities).
Perhatian Dato’ Sri-Dato’ Sri di atas perkara ini amat dihargai.
Sekian, terima kasih.
Related entry:
BEAT’s Recommendation To The Ministry of Transport Malaysia
Tags: AirAsia complaint, airlines discrimination against disabled people, Chan Kong Choy, Shahrizat Abdul Jalil
The Star - March 28, 2007: It’s time disabled be made senator
Wednesday March 28, 2007It’s time disabled be made senator
By AUDREY EDWARDS
audee@thestar.com.myKAJANG: The time has come for a disabled person to be an appointed senator.
And Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil has written a letter to Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi recommending it.
“Our nominees are involved in many fields. They have high qualifications and are experienced,” she told reporters after opening the National Down Syndrome seminar yesterday.
“They will be an example to Malaysians. The ministry feels the time has come to have at least one disabled person as a representative in the Dewan Negara.”
Shahrizat also said that a special counter would be opened at all district welfare offices beginning Sunday to serve people with disabilities, their family members and caregivers.
This, she said, was to make it easier for them to deal with matters such as aid, registration and equipment. The counter would be open daily during office hours.
On the access auditing being carried out by the ministry with the Housing and Local Government Ministry, Shahrizat said a report would be ready by the middle of the year.
The auditing is being done at all major towns in the country to examine the barriers in infrastructure such as buildings, roads and transportation against disabled people.
“I am not happy because I feel we have to do more. It is not difficult. It is just a question of whether to give importance to it or not,” she said.
“If we do not begin from now to make sure that all the facilities available are barrier-free, we will face trouble when we suddenly wake up and find that Malaysia is an ageing society and we are not prepared for it.”
Tags: Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, disabled people Malaysia, Ismail Md Salleh, Shahrizat Abdul Jalil
Letter To MPAJ
Finally, I have found some time to settle the one issue that has been foremost in my mind recently – the complaint letter to Majlis Perbandaran Ampang Jaya (MPAJ). That letter was addressed to the President of the Municipal Council and copied to the Menteri Besar of Selangor, Setiausaha Sulit Kanan to the Menteri Perumahan dan Kerajaan Tempatan, Setiausaha Sulit Kanan to the Menteri Pembangunan Wanita, Keluarga dan Masyarakat, Ketua Pengarah Kebajikan Masyarakat, Yap Soo Sun, the ADUN for this area and the President of the Persatuan Orang-Orang Cacat Anggota Malaysia (Society of the Orthopaedically Handicapped Malaysia).
Wuan took some photographs of the offending lamppost to illustrate how impossible it was for me to manoeuvre around the lamppost by myself. With some assistance from her, it can be done but that poses an apparent danger as evident from the nasty fall that happened to us the other evening. From the last photograph, we can see how close the vehicle was to the walkway. Picture the time that I lay sprawled on the road. I was in the path of oncoming vehicles. I could have been killed. That could have happened to Wuan as well.
The lack of accessible walkways, together with the lack of accessible transport service, is one of the many reasons why we do not see many wheelchair users out and about in public places. In Tokyo, it was not unusual to see the severely disabled moving around in electric wheelchairs. It was also easy for wheelchair users to board the trains and buses there. As far as I know, Putra LRT is the only accessible public transport in Malaysia, and that was only after disabled persons staged demonstrations to demand for accessible facilities at the stations. It is an uphill battle for us all the way.
May 28, 2006
YB Presiden Via email and post
Majlis Perbandaran Ampang Jaya
Menara MPAJ
Jalan Pandan Utama
55100 Pandan Indah
Kuala LumpurDear Sir,
INACCESSIBLE, DAMAGED AND OBSTRUCTED WALKWAYS AT PANDAN PERDANA A DANGER TO WHEELCHAIR USERS AND PEDESTRIANS
I reside at the address above. Several times a week, I patronise the shops at Jalan Perdana 4/5. I am a wheelchair user. I usually go together with my friend because I need her assistance with my wheelchair. We have two choices to go to the shops. One, I can either push myself on the busy road of Jalan Perdana 3/1 and risk being knocked over by a bus or a car. Two, to avoid that danger, my friend assists me by lifting my wheelchair onto the walkways. The walkways on both sides of Jalan Perdana 3/1 are not accessible. There are no kerb ramps to the walkways.
There is this lamppost at Jalan Perdana 3/1 (opposite the Jalan Perdana 4/5 shops) that stands right in the middle of the walkway. My friend always had difficulty manoeuvring my wheelchair around it because of the narrow space between the lamppost and the edge of the walkway.
While she was trying to manoeuvre my wheelchair around that particular lamppost on May 28, the front caster slipped off the edge of the walkway. We both lost balance and fell onto the road and were injured. All the time as I was lying helpless on the road, I worried that a bus may come and roll over us. Fortunately, three good Samaritans stopped their vehicles and helped me back onto the wheelchair.
The main reason we both fell off the walkway was because of the obstruction caused by the lamppost. It does not make sense to plant a lamppost right in the middle of the walkway. Additionally, many stretches of the walkways are damaged by the indiscriminate parking of buses, lorries and cars. These vehicles also cause obstructions that prevent pedestrians from using the walkways. This endangers our lives as we have no choice but to walk on the road.
As a pedestrian who uses that stretch of walkway often, I respectfully demand that you remove that offending lamppost immediately to prevent similar accidents from happening again. I also request that you make walkways, not only at Pandan Perdana, but in all areas under your jurisdiction accessible by constructing kerb ramps to allow accessibility to wheelchair users, prams and the elderly.
At the same time, the damaged walkways should be repaired without delay. The uneven surface is a danger to all pedestrians. Owners of vehicles that park on these walkways must be penalised. What is the purpose of constructing walkways that cannot be used? Does the MPAJ expect me use my wheelchair on public roads? Does the MPAJ expect pedestrians to risk their lives by walking on the roads?
I would like to remind you that time and again, our government has stressed that Malaysia is a masyarakat penyayang. How can we be a masyarakat penyayang when simple things like public walkways are not accessible to disabled persons and the elderly? The government should take the lead in instituting a caring Malaysian society by addressing, among others, the environmental barriers that are preventing disabled persons from participating in the activities of the community at large. The MPAJ can show its caring aspects by tackling the matters that I have highlighted. Please act now on these blatant examples of a non-masyarakat penyayang and non-pedestrian-friendly walkways before lives are lost.
I look forward to a positive reply from you regarding the resolution of this issue soonest possible.
Thank you.
Tags: DUN Teratai, Jabatan Kebajikan Masyarakat, Mohamad Khir Toyo, MPAJ, Ong Ka Ting, Pandan Perdana, POCAM, Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, Yap Soo Sun
