No access: Handicapped face trial in reaching court

Two years after LHC orders, still no ramps built at Sessions Court.

LAHORE:

The Sessions Court complex in the city is inaccessible to the disabled, some two years after the Lahore High Court directed all courts to build ramps or lifts for persons in wheelchairs.

On March 21, 2009, then LHC Chief Justice Khawaja Muhammad Sharif issued instructions to all district and sessions judges in Punjab and Islamabad to make their court buildings accessible to the handicapped. The LHC then set an example by installing access ramps.

But at the Sessions Court, a multistorey building, there are no ramps. At the second floor, this correspondent met Mustafa Ali and Muhammad Bashir, litigants in a property case.

Bashir, 70, sat atop Ali’s shoulders. “He (Bashir) is ill and cannot walk, so this was the only way to come up here,” said Ali.

Muhammad Rustum sat outside a family court, also on the second floor, in his wheelchair. “I came for the dissolution of my daughter’s marriage,” he said. “Four men carried me up the stairs in my wheelchair.”

Syed Haider Ali, 60, came to the courts to get a copy of a case file. Walking on crutches, he said, it took him half an hour to get to the third floor. “It is very tough for me to walk up stairs,” he said. “I would take one or two steps and then have to rest for a few second to catch my breath.”

Lawyers said that the Sessions Court should make the building disabled-friendly. “It is sad. Courts are a symbol of justice for all, but some people cannot access them.

The handicapped are being ignored here,” said Advocate Malik Amjad Ali.

Advocate Muhammad Asif said that it was condemnable that the instructions of the LHC were being ignored. He said the disabled avoided leaving their houses because travel was so difficult.

LHC Additional Registrar (Planning and Development) Rana Abdul Qadeer said that he was disappointed that no access ramps or lifts had been constructed in the Sessions Court and no lift had been activated for the use of handicapped litigants. He said that he would take notice of it and work on ramps and lifts would be started soon.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 28^th, 2011.