Sorry plight of white cane carriers in the street

Pabitra Guragain

KATHMANDU: Bikal Thapa, who walks with the help of a white cane, takes a pause for almost 20 times while walking to Gatthaghar that lies 20 minutes (for him) away from his Sanothimi-based college hostel. Sometimes he stumbles through the motorcycles parked haphazardly on the road side and is otherwise obstructed by the damaged section of the road. Electricity poles installed unsystematically on the roadside are also a source of nuisance for Bikal.
Such adversities for the people like Bikal with visual impairment really make their road travel ardous and painful at times. But Bikal’s experience is a common phenomenon that the visually impaired people face every during their movement in the streets of the Kathmandu valley, in absence of special foot path (blind-friendly) for them.
Bikal recalls his bad experiences of nearly being knocked down by a tractor and the instances of falling inside a pit twice, with injuries.
Rabin BK from a village in Doti and pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Kathmandu finds the movement in the capital street really challenging. Vehicles parked on the roadside violating traffic rules, unevenness of the roads, pits, humps, potholes, construction materials piled up on the roadside, open drainage and lack of accessible signals for the blind pedestrians are making their movement in the street tougher But who is there to take note of our situation?, he laments, recalling many incidents of hitting electricity poles head-on.
Rabin finds the culture of unsystematic parking more problematic. We don’t know when we get stumbled through a parked motor and get injured when we are walking on the roadside, he shares. He insists on the construction of blind-friendly infrastructures including the roadways.
The bitter truth is that the valley roads have no sufficient subways for pedestrians, and for the blind is still out of imagination of the road authorities. Not only poor road infrastructure and parked vehicles but sometimes human too turn as perpetrator for them as Rabin showed an injury just below his right eyebrow he suffered as a man walking bumped on to him. But the plight of visually impaired in the street is rarely realised by the normal people, he shares his feelings.
Saru subba, who originally hails from the southern Jhapa, says as a woman and a blind too she is now used to encounter various sorts of problems in the street. People with ill intention seek an appropriate time to take undue advantage from the visually impaired women pedestrians who seems in need of help to identify places, streets and the safe route.
Visually impaired Prahalad Chaudhary of Khanar-4, Sunsari voices for construction of roads safe for people like him. Zebra crossings in Nepal except in one or two locations do not feature blind-friendly signals. We as visually impaired are in dire need of extra facilities in the street but who would care, he laments.
Besides the regular problems, their time in the street becomes more challenging in rainy season as they encounter with additional problems in the wet road. Stepping on to potholes filled with water are common incidents they go through during the monsoon. Sometimes motor riders take satisfaction by running over water clogged on the roadside, splashing dirty water on the bodies of pedestrians, says white cane holder Karna Bahadur Karki.
Hurt but still hopeful
White stick carriers are hurt as their day-to-day travel in the road gives them numerous unpleasant experiences, but still hope that the State would one day realize the plight of visually impaired pedestrians and do something to address their problem. Developing blind-friendly road infrastructure would be a way to start with as far as their recommendations are concerned.
As the country is in the reconstruction phase after the earthquake, roadways here which are never friendly to the visually impaired needs reconstruction too. The visually impaired equally feel the vital role of media in presenting the picture of their tougher days in the street before the mass, making them aware of their plight and exerting pressure on the bodies concerned to built blind-friendly road facilities. RSS

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