“There are more than 2,000 citizens in wheelchairs in the capital city which has the highest centralization. But we can’t travel as we wish like healthy people. First of all, there are no particular roads or ramps for wheelchairs in our city. Therefore, it’s impossible to ride in city buses and other types of transportation,” said S. Ganbold, director of the Sukhbaatar district board for the National Association of the Physically Handicapped.

According to Ganbold’s statistics, there are fewer than 10 special roads for wheelchairs in Ulaanbaatar, such as the University of Science and Technology, the 3-4th micro-districts, and on the way to the entrance of the Mongolian Children’s Palace. However those roads are too steep and have no hand rails, thus it’s hard to go up, especially in winter times because of the ice. Also they face problems in going in and out of their own apartments.

“Since we were born as humans, we need to communicate with society everyday. We need to go to hospitals to see doctors, to see the officials from our local authorities to have our rights protected; we need to go to stores. Nevertheless, there aren’t any particular stairs or toilets. The time has already come for the state to take care of this,” Ts. Enkhtuya, head of the Association to Support Wheelchair Citizens of Mongolia told MonInfo Monday.

Recently, a conference of physically handicapped people was held in the government house under the auspices of President N. Enkhbayar. The participants were petitioning about the lack of roads and toilets for them.

Following the conference the, ‘Wheelchair Donation Foundation’ started formulating a project to construct 30-40 roads and stairs in 2007, with the Open Society Institute fund. The project has been introduced to the governor’s headquarter for consideration.

“The Ministry of Construction and Urban Development have submitted a formality called ‘Normality of Construction Planning for Physically Handicapped’, which satisfied the international standards in 2004. But there are still no construction projects that have followed the standards; even 2 years have passed since then. That’s the reason we are formulating this project,” said the head of the ‘Donated Wheelchair Foundation’.

According to the project, inspections have been made at 30-40 areas, including district authority buildings, health care centers, universities and secondary schools and governmental organizations. Investigations also showed that 10 construction projects which were opened for public service purposes have not satisfied the international standards agreed upon in 2004.

“MNT 5 million in budget is required to build only one small road. The road must be 80 cm wide, 10 degrees slope, and must have handles for climbing up. We are planning to build toilets for the handicapped in the airport and the train station,” she added.

“The Inspection Authority should inspect whether the buildings which are being built nowadays satisfy the normative passed by the Ministry. Our Ministry will formulate 2 standards before the New Year, in order to supply the physically handicapped citizens with opportunities to travel on both roads and sidewalks,” said G. Myagmar, director of the Construction, Apartment and Public Policy organizing office at the Ministry of Construction and Urban Development.