A WALK OF awareness for people suffering with multiple sclerosis (MS) snarled traffic on the busy Hastings/Rockley section of Highway 7 yesterday, and proved how far Barbados has to go to become truly accessible to the disabled.
“Government has promised and promised and, for example, at [a restaurant] today the staff offered to bring drinks out for us, but if we wanted to go to the bathroom to wash our hands, you cannot get in until they sort out the entrance ramp,” said secretary of the MS Society of Barbados, Boneta Phillips, as she and more than ten other wheelchair users were forced to stay on the road in the course of traffic.
The walk, from the Richard Haynes Boardwalk to Bert’s Bar in Christ Church, saw the MS Society members struggling to avoid potholes, and being unable to use the high sidewalks in one of the island’s largest tourist thoroughfares.
“I really think that as an organisation of people with disabilities we should be naming and shaming contractors and architects,” she suggested.
