NSW - Roses are given priority
access to wheelchair accessible taxis in
flagrant abuse of State regulations. Wheelchair
users left waiting on the sidelines.
The Physical Disability Council of NSW (PDCN)
has written today to the NSW Minister of
Transport and the Director General of the
Department of Transport to call for immediate
action to penalise a St Valentine’s Day
massacre of wheelchair accessible taxi services
in metropolitan Sydney.
While wheelchair users have been waiting even
longer than usual for wheelchair accessible
taxis to show up, the vehicles have actually
been used to deliver cartons of roses to hopeful
lovers.
The Passenger Transport (Taxi-cab Services)
Regulations 2001 requiring a “driver of
wheelchair accessible taxi-cab to give
preference to [a] person using a
wheelchair”.
Speaking today, in Sydney, PDCN Executive
Officer, Dougie Herd, stated:
The reports we have received of roses being
given a better service than people with
disability in need of wheelchair accessible taxi
services is completely unacceptable. NSW
regulations clearly state that wheelchair
accessible taxi operators must give preference
to wheelchair users.
Operators of these services receive a
$250,000 subsidy to put their wheelchair
accessible taxis on the street. They are meant
to be used to transport people in wheelchairs,
not flowers.
When this happened two years ago on
Mother’s Day, we were promised it would not
happen again. When it happened last St
Valentine’s Day, we were promised it
wouldn’t happen again. Yet here we are
… another Valentine’s Day massacre of
our right to travel. It’s time to get this
abuse stopped.
More information from Dougie Herd (PDCN
Executive Officer) on 02 9552 1606
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