Blind Cape Town Riders Facing Cuts To Service

by Kiara Wales

Daily Maverick

   National Disability Rights Awareness Month in South Africa ran from Nov. 3 to Dec. 3, but two visually impaired Cape Town residents have never felt less visible.

   Sergil January and Benjamin Pedro are employed at the Cape Town Society for the Blind (CTSB), as an awareness officer and an orientation and mobility specialist, respectively. They have both been Dial-a-Ride users since 2022, after being on the waiting list for 16 years, according to Pedro.

   Pedro uses the service regularly to commute from his home in Athlone to work in Salt River, and then to Eerste River, where he spends his weekends.

   January uses Dial-a-Ride for his commute from Retreat to Salt River and back, and to visit his son in Athlone.

   However, this service now hangs in the balance.

Proposed downscaling

   In a statement Aug. 7, the City of Cape Town announced that Dial-a-Ride would return to its “original mandate” of serving “those with the most critical transport needs,” owing to budgetary constraints.

   Established about 30 years ago and operating under the umbrellas of MyCiTi and logistics company HG Travelling Services, Dial-a-Ride’s original mandate is as a “dedicated curb-to-curb service for people with disabilities who are unable to access mainstream public transport services.”

   It has been used for travel to and from work, schools and universities, hospitals and clinics, religious gatherings and social visits, thereby providing access to the rights to work, education, health, religious expression and leisure, among many others.

Legal proceedings

   Eligibility for the service was to be cut Sept. 8, restricted to individuals in manual or motorized wheelchairs and those with severe walking impairments, strictly for their commute “to and from formal employment,” according to the statement.

   Thus, ad-hoc or private travel, students, organizations transporting individuals with disabilities, elderly passengers and people with visual, mental or cognitive impairments would no longer be supported, according to letters sent out to blind and visually impaired users, sourced via the CTSB.

   A formal legal application, supplemented by affidavits signed by 19 individuals confirming the proposed cuts’ disruption to their daily lives, was subsequently lodged at the Cape Town High Court by the Western Cape Network on Disability and #UniteBehind, facilitated by the People’s legal Centre.

   The organizations sought an interim interdict to stop the cuts for 60 days, which was granted and implemented, according to a joint statement released Oct. 10.

   An ongoing legal review now requests that the court “declare the planned cuts to Dial-a-Ride unlawful and order that they be abolished completely.”

   Until the review process is concluded, the existing interdict remains in force, with Dial-a-Ride continuing operations as before, according to Anthony Ghillino, chairperson of the Network, and a wheelchair user himself, who has also used the services since 2002.

   However, many Dial-a-Ride users have claimed they have had significant difficulties booking – or been entirely unable to book – ad-hoc trips since this announcement, despite the continuation of the services in the interim, according to CTSB chief executive Judith Coetzee.

   Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities Sindisiwe Chikunga and Rob Quintas, the mayoral committee member for urban mobility, along with other senior urban mobility officials, recently held a meeting to discuss the service’s long-term sustainability.

   “It was clear that both spheres of government recognize the need to improve the funding models for Dial-a-Ride,” Quintas said.

   According to Ghillino, the Network has engaged in quarterly meetings with the City’s Universal Access Transversal Committee. He expressed frustration at the most recent meeting taking place eight days before the decision’s announcement, with “no mention of the intended cuts to the [Dial-a-Ride] service” therein.

   The Network expressed its dissent with the lack of citizen participation in the decision, and said it contradicted the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act mandate that “denying or removing from any person who has a disability, any supporting or enabling facility necessary for their function in society” is classified as unfair discrimination.

The individual impact

   Both January and Pedro, who are completely blind, rely on Dial-a-Ride for access to health, socioeconomic and job opportunities, for which they would cease to be eligible under the proposed reforms, Coetzee confirmed.

   “People may assume that because we have the ability to walk independently, that we can travel independently,” January said. “That is not the case.”

   Pedro said Dial-a-Ride’s importance is largely tied to its affordability, compared with e-hailing services such as Uber, which are considered more accessible to those with disabilities, but are also more expensive.

   January said he pays an average of R21 (US $1.24) for his Dial-a-Ride trips. It’s cheaper than MyCiTi’s fees because the bus service does not distinguish between able-bodied passengers and those with disabilities. “You pay an equal fee to the able-bodied person, notwithstanding the differences in work opportunities and those opportunities’ accessibility,” he said.

   However, he complained that the service’s name is misleading.

   He explained that users calling in are given a daily timeframe between 10am and 11am to make ad hoc bookings – “to do grocery shopping and go the doctor and such” – at least one week in advance, with the first 15 individuals’ applications being accepted, while those using the web-based app are required to book three days in advance.

   Pedro also said that physical safety is a chief concern for visually impaired people, which Dial-a-Ride addresses by ensuring that their pick-ups happen in close proximity to users’ exact location. He recounts being hit by an oncoming truck a few years ago while crossing the road outside his place of work, because he was unable to hear the vehicle coming.

   January believes the City’s allocation of R252 million (US 14.8 million) in the current financial year on footways, formalizing cycle lanes and developing new non-motorized transport infrastructure, in particular, is unfair.

   “It really frustrates me when the City thinks less of me than a bicycle lane,” January said.