Friday June 18, 2010

Towards disabled-friendly buildings in PJ
By TAN KARR WEI
karrwei@thestar.com.my

THE Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ) hopes to set up a team to look into enforcement of guidelines for disabled-friendly buildings.

MBPJ secretary Puasa Md Taib said now there was only one officer in charge of the guidelines for barrier-free buildings while developed countries had a whole department to handle these matters.

“We’re looking into having a team with at least five officers, including those from the other departments like engineering, building control, landscaping and also councillors,” said Puasa after launching the two-day Section 13 Barrier-Free City workshop at the PJ Live Arts Centre in Jaya One.

He said having a team would ease the implementation of a pilot project in Section 13 for a barrier-free city.
At the launch: Puasa (second from left) flanked by MBPJ councillors Richard Yeoh, Puasa and Anthony Thanasayan with Sharipah and Living and Training Centre (ILTC) president Francis Siva.

“Many of the older places like Section 52 have been upgraded with disabled -friendly facilities but they are not inter-connected.

“We choose Section 13 because it has just been gazetted as a commercial area and we can put the responsibility on landowners to come up with buildings that are barrier-free and interlinked with the other structures,” Puasa said.

Puasa said the council would not issue a Certificate of Fitness (CF) to landowners who did not comply with the barrier-free guidelines.

“I hope to see Section 13 as a place with all the disabled-friendly facilities in place,” he said.

He added that the council would also be pushing for developers to follow the Green Building Index when planning their developments.

MBPJ town planning director Sharipah Marhaini Syed Ali said MBPJ also had plans to install mobile ramps on staircases at MBPJ buildings and parks.