Metrobali.com quotes the Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy, Mari Elka Pangestu, complaining that many professional tourism practitioners in Indonesia have little understanding or concern of the need for disabled and handicap facilities in serving the public.
“Internationally there exists a code of ethics for tourism that includes the need to respect all consumers. This includes the disabled,” said Pangestu at a public discussion on the implementation of rules for handicapped access on public buildings held in Jakarta on Saturday, October 11, 2014.
The Tourism Minister pointed to the failure to build hotel rooms with doors wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs as just one example where Indonesian hotel operators fail in their legal responsibilities to the disabled.
“Sometime our disabled friends complain of the difficulties of gaining access to their bathrooms when they are staying at a hotel,” said Pangestu.
The outgoing Minister for Tourism and the Creative Economy said that current building codes contains sufficient requirements on accessibility for the disabled with the problem being implementation and enforcement of the rules.
At the same meeting, Sri Lestari, a paraplegic woman from Klaten, Central Java, who recently drove a specially modified motorcycle from Aceh to Jakarta, confirmed the Minister’s statement, saying it was difficult during her journey to find gas stations with bathrooms suitable for people in wheelchairs. Similar barriers to the handicapped, she said, are found at hotels and other tourism facilities she encountered in her epic overland journey.
Source: Bali Discovery
