Issues & Problems

This image took place at Rama9 interaction. It’s a common scene in Bangkok a local is so used to it. We wondered how to cross the road like this. After scrutiny you would realise that even ordinary people find difficulty in crossing it. The crossing is doubly worse, and almost practically impossible, for PWDs. Why? 1. The road and footpath is extremely in different level. The ramp that you see is not functional as it’s not seamless or stepless when you go down from footpath. This might crack down any wheelchair users easily.

This is the photo of the Rama 9 Intersection I took a few days ago. It is a thing that we get used to see when we pass by. I am also the one who has grown up in this city and seen this image since I was a child. Today, I simply think that if we want to make solve this problem, we need to do it by ourselves. Let’s call for action! I invite you all. This problem would be gone, if we “all” work together to fix it. Let’s clean up “our house” together.

Our friends sent us this image and narrated a sad story that he had to bring her dad to the hospital but the parking wasn’t available. With conditions, she had to drop him off far away and let him walked to the hospital! Visiting the hospital is a basic human rights. Yet many of us still can’t have it due to poor footpath, an unrestricted street vendors, and many physical barriers in our city. Simply walking on a footpath in Bangkok, if not the whole Thailand, remains a challenging activity. There are problems everywhere, you name it.

Jern-jern is a young PWD with muscular weakness (ALS – Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis). Still fresh from university, she has been working for 2 years. Her office is at Ratchada (read as Rat-cha-da) area, adjacent to her place in about 300-meter wheeling distance. Along the way on sidewalk, she has to encounter with a shit called ‘S-Guard’. It’s a traffic-calming invention built to prevent motorists driving on sidewalk. The S-Guard  can’t do the job, preventing motorists but blocking Jern-jern. She has no choice but to get down on the road and find her own way out. And we all know that …

I recently got this pic. The width of Bangkok’s pavement is next to nothing. While the Tokyo city built since 36 years ago and offers you very wide even a car can run on. An image is worth million words. This kind of scene has prevailed in Thai society for too long. Why didn’t we see much improvements at all? Why we’re still underdeveloped, and let this non-sense takes over our city and our life?

The number of registered PWDs in Thailand accounts roughly about 2 million people. Among this, I’ve selected some interesting fact, and one that raises a question, about PWDs’ educational level to share with you. What do you think? No doubt, education is a key factor, and gateway, to one’s pursue of quality life. We must help each other. Help rebuild our city with more equality and accessibility. When we have a truly accessible and equitable city where we can go anywhere we want, “the disabled” whose perception from the public is ‘less fortunate’, would be able to go to school …

The misuse of the accessible parking has been a prevalent, and long-instilled, problem in our society. This is obviously an act that’s against the law and in total disregard for the need. Knowing the limit of one’s rights as a citizen, thus, is crucial than ever. So today I’d like to share with you some quick take-away facts, compressed from pages of law papers. I took it from the section about the legal requirements, in 2005, it said there are 3 groups of people that can legally park on the accessible parking

Bangkok is a big city that has environmental issues, especially in air pollution, same as the others. The positive side of shutting down the city during last 2 months is that the environment can recovery itself. These issues come from nobody but us.

In the situation where people around the world have been fighting with the Coronavirus, people feel insecure. So, they have to find something to insure their life. It might be easy for all of you to do the insurance but not for people with disabilities. I have been hearing about Coronavirus insurance denied people with disabilities to do the insurance for a while but didn’t have a chance to deal with.

In a past few years, we have got contact from Thammasat university, also students who contacted me by them self and professors who asking us to give some special lectures, this year Prof. Han-sa who teaches in ‘UD352-Mega City in the Global South’ also have us a called. “I’m appreciated that professor giving us the opportunity to pass-on our knowledge to the students which is very worth it”, I said that I first met the her.