As South Africa marked National Disability Rights Awareness Month in November, the Transport Education Training Authority (TETA), in partnership with the City of Ekurhuleni, celebrated the completion of the universal access skills and capacity building programme.
A certification ceremony was held in Boksburg to reflect on the programme’s outcomes and how all participants will utilise the knowledge and insight gained. In attendance was the City of Ekurhuleni’s MMC Transport Roads and Stormwater, Andile Mngwevu.
He delivered a message of support and highlighted the municipality’s focus on providing quality, safe, reliable, and consistently available transport systems.
The programme, which was carried out over an eight-week period, sought to develop the working knowledge of bus drivers and the management team of Ekurhuleni Bus Services as it relates to people with disabilities and enable them to deliver a more inclusive public transport service.
The training intervention also sought to address latent and overt non-compliance by the sector to key legislation such as the National Land Transport Act and the Constitution.
Fifty employees from the City of Ekurhuleni Bus Services participated in the training programme, including bus drivers and management. The training for management staff focused on the business case and legislative compliance reasons for implementing universal access within bus operations.
Drivers and support staff training focused on increasing awareness of behavioural barriers and how to practically support passengers with special needs in general, and people with disabilities in particular.
James Motha, TETA’s senior manager of strategic projects and stakeholder relations, outlined the critical role that the organisation plays in delivering outcomes-based training, which enables stakeholders in the transport sector to acquire skills that can be utilised in the workplace and society at large.
Lisa Venter, a universal access consultant who supported the design and implementation of the training programme, drew attention to key pieces of legislation, chief among these being the Constitution and the Land Transport Act, which are very specific about the realisation of universal access and disability rights.
The Act places a focus on the requirement for the entire travel chain of a passenger to be universally accessible and factor in how people move from one point to another.
Representatives from the South African National Deaf Association (Deaf SA) and Blind SA were invited to share their experiences as users of public transport systems, the challenges they face and the basics of dealing with persons with a disability.
Drivers who participated in the programme were open about some of the misinformed misconceptions that they had before taking part in the training. All trainees were given an opportunity to use a wheelchair or opaque glasses and a white cane, to get on and off the bus.
Lefa Moremedi, one of the Ekurhuleni Bus Services managers who took part in the training, said the municipality has been in the process of gradually phasing out busses that are not universally accessible. Since 2016 all new busses that have been procured are universally accessible.
Budget limitations greatly impact the phasing in of universally accessible buses and must be approached as a process, not an event.
