Charging PWDs for wheelchair use at airports

I read with mixed reaction the article titled “Cebu Pacific took a beating from airport melee, too” (Inquirer, 5/8/12), regarding the predicament of passenger Socorro Jabor, a double amputee who opted to crawl down the airplane ramp in Singapore’s Changi airport, refusing to pay P11,000 for the use of the wheelchair lift. The airline had failed to inform her beforehand that she had to pay for its use. This incident got the ire of Akbayan Rep. Walden Bello who said: “This is a question of command responsibility. The burden is on Cebu Pacific and all other airlines to ensure the safety and convenience of all passengers, and they should be doubly attentive to the needs of PWDs (persons with disabilities) who are flying with them.”

This reminds me of the time my wife Trinidad and I went to Singapore on Dec. 18, 2009, via a Cebu Pacific flight. When we were about to disembark at the Changi airport, a man on the ground upon seeing her, shouted “Wait, we’ll provide you a wheelchair,” without informing us that we had to pay P11,000 for its use. Fortunately (or shall we say unfortunately?), nobody provided us with a wheelchair, and so my wife slowly went down the ramp, with me guiding her. Had there been a wheelchair, where would we have gotten the  money to pay? That would have been a problem. It was really a blessing that what happened to Jabor did not happen to us.

On the other hand, in April 1997, while on a brief vacation in Bogor, Indonesia, to visit our daughter Mary Ann, my wife met an accident inside the house due to slippery tiles, damaging her pelvic bone. We brought her to Jakarta General Hospital, but a doctor there advised me to bring my wife home because the hospital lacked the facilities needed to attend to her.

At the Jakarta International Airport, my wife was provided with a wheelchair. We were not asked to pay for its use.

Upon arrival in our country on April 6, 1997, being a guerrilla veteran of World War II, I immediately brought my wife to the Veterans Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City, for treatment. She was confined there for a week. The attending doctors jokingly told me that my wife’s damaged pelvic bone was imported.

—GODOFREDO O. PETEZA,

Daet, Camarines Norte 4600