A disservice to our disabled athletes

Jeswan Kaur | October 13, 2012

The government is totally wrong in categorising our Paralympics atheletes as second class citizens.

COMMENT

If the disabled community is given a chance to rate ruling government Barisan Nasional, they would without the blink of an eye give it an ‘F’.

The reason for this is the community’s frustration with the federal government in taking disabled people for granted so much so that even the 15-year wait for the Persons with Disabilities Act which finally came into existence in July 2008 now seems worthless.

For one, this Act provides no penalty for discrimination against the OKU group.

And even the creation of the National Council for Persons with Disabilities, headed by the Women, Family and Community Development Minister is a waste of time, for the council is ‘helpless’ when it comes to compelling other ministries to streamline or amend their laws to be consistent with those pertaining to persons with disabilities (PWDs).

The council can only “advise, consult, review and recommend” – all of which are non-legally binding. This being so, where does the OKU community turn to air their grievances each time they are discriminated against?

In 1990, an amendment to the Uniform Building By-laws made it mandatory for all public buildings to provide facilities for PWDs. Premises already built prior to the amendment were required to make the necessary changes within three years from the date of commencement.

Twenty-two years later, the situation remains the same if not worse; very few buildings in Malaysia are OKU-friendly. As for the rest, they simply dismissed the demand made by the Uniform Building By-Laws and faced no penalty. Why?

The never-ending discrimination and prejudice faced by the PWDs is heart-breaking; but to look at this community as a ‘charity’ case as was done by Sports and Youth Minister Ahmad Shabery Cheek is unpardonable.

In his desperate attempt at explaning why the disabled athletes competing in the 2012 London Paralympics Games have been discriminated against in terms of reward, Ahmad Shabery went on the defensive, claiming the ministry was no charity institution to dole out alms.

PWDs second class citizens?
That and the fact that Ahmad Shabery has in effect categorised the Paralympics atheletes as second class citizens has put the Sports and Youth Minister in hot soup. To the Dewan Pemuda PAS, the remark by Ahmad was regrettable and had offended the feelings of OKU-community.

The minster had gone on to say that the federal government would not be giving pensions to the disabled athletes who brought back medals from London. Malaysia bagged one silver and one bronze medal in the London Paralympics Games last month, equalling the achievement of the able-bodied athletes in Olympics.

Of the 23 athletes in Malaysia contingent, Hasihin Sanawi won a silver medal in archery while Mohd Ziyad Zolkefli clinched a bronze in shot putt. The DPPM vice-chief Dr Raja Ahmad Iskandar wants Ahmad Shabery to apologise to the Paralympics athletes.

Just as angry is former Youth and Sports deputy minister and one-time MCA chief Ong Tee Keat who is questioning the discriminative and ‘unfair’ reward system for disabled athletes.

Ong, the MP for Pandan plans to raise the issue in Parliament soon and would devote a portion of his debate speech on Budget 2013 to question the system, which offers a lucrative one-off cash reward to Olympics medalists but not to their Paralympics counterparts.

Under the Athlete Incentive Scheme (Shakam), gold medal winners at the Olympics received a one-off RM1 million payment while silver and bronze medal winners receive RM300,000 and RM100,000 respectively.

This was in stark contrast to Paralympic gold medal winners who received RM300,000 while silver and bronze medal winners get RM200,000 and RM100,000 respectively.

Via a video clip posted on his YouTube channel, Ong said: “Today, despite them winning medals, there is still a world of differences in terms of the treatments they got as compared to Lee Chong Wei or Pandelela (Rinong).

“Disabled athletes fork out double efforts to take part in Paralympics, they should be given equal shares of reward.”

Minister’s confounded ignorance

Ahmad Shabery claims the Paralympics games’ structure, where multiple sub-categories are found under a category such as 100 metre sprint was the reason for the reward gap between the able-bodied and disabled athletes.

But Ong is not buying the Youth and Minister’s lame excuse, saying the ministry should remember the physical challenges the disabled athletes need to endure and the jobs they may forgo to take part in the trainings.

“The adoption scheme (bapa angkat) should be extended to disabled athletes, whereby government-linked companies and big corporate entities adopt them and provide them with a flexible job.

“At least they don’t need to worry that if they go for training for two or three times in a week, they will lose their jobs,” Ong said.

But the question is does Ahmad Shabery share the same concern as Ong and Raja Ahmad? From the look of things, it does not seem so.

Jeswan Kaur is a freelance writer and a FMT columnist.