Tourism and disability issues
Tourism is a growing industry in Malawi. This is why government set aside September as the National Tourism Month as we count down to the World Tourism Day on September 27. This year, the focus is on promoting accessibility for all. In line with this, the Department of Tourism shuttled people with disabilities from the Malawi Council for the Handicapped (Macoha) headquarters in Blantyre, to Majete Wildlife Reserve for an educational tour.
While there, people with disabilities had problems accessing various facilities of the reserve as they are not disability-friendly.
Did it have to take a trip by people with disabilities to realise that our tourist attraction sites are not accessible for people with disabilities?
The Disability Act (2012) partly states that “the Government shall take appropriate measures to ensure that persons with disabilities have access to the physical environment, transportation, information and communications, including information and communication technologies and systems, and other facilities and services available or provided to the public.”
To achieve accessibility in tourism, we have to make sure that our transportation systems are also accessible to people with disabilities.
It does not take a rocket scientist to know that our public transport systems are inaccessible to persons with special needs. People with disabilities have a wide range of special needs and it is sad that we knowingly ignore the fact that they are also part of the tourists that would boost the tourism industry in our country.
If international tourists with disability were to visit our country, they would be dismayed to discover that most of the sites they would like to visit or see are not accessible to them.
Looking at the broader picture, even hospitals, which are part of the health care system, are not favourable to the special needs that people with disabilities have. If a person who is deaf was taken to one of our district hospitals, he or she would be met by health providers with no kind of background in sign language and yet they claim to provide a basic necessity to the nation, the same also goes for our security.
Looking at other sectors of our tourism such as restaurants and hotels, the same gap is widespread.
This shows that various players in the tourism business are not serious with the needs of people with disabilities.
Tourism is part of informal education in special needs education. This education involves gaining knowledge not only by instruction, but also through the various things that we meet in our day to day life.
Noting that the people with disabilities who were on a trip to Majete Wildlife Reserve failed to do so due to the inaccessibility of some facilities in the tourist attraction, it is not wrong to say that they were denied their right to education and freedom of movement.
This also shows us that our country is failing to live up to stipulations of the Disability Act which some sectors have commended as a milestone.
If the country’s tourism industry wants to achieve accessibility for all, we do not have to take people with disabilities on tours.
We should make sure that the various sectors that are within the industry are accessible to the people with disabilities.
People with disabilities are supposed to access everything that can be accessed by people without disabilities, let us ensure that this happens in our country. n
