DEAR Editor,-
We went to the Southcoast Mall on Saturday, May 17 and found a pole in the middle of a parking bay for wheel chairs at the Wimpy entrance. As the other bays had already been occupied, I had to park far away from the entrance and needed to use twobays to enable me to push a wheelchair in next to the car so that my wife could get access to the chair. Pushing the chair over a bumpy tarmac caused her a great amount of pain, giving rise to ask why the disabled parking sign could surely have been better placed on the pavement.
Last Saturday, we encountered a further problem, this time at the Shelly Centre. When we arrived back at our car and while I was helping my wife out of the wheelchair, a new Merc parked next to us. The driver got out, all dressed up with shiny black shoes (I thought he was on his way to a ball that evening) and, after speaking to one of the car guards, WALKED into the centre. There was absolutely nothing wrong with him – no wheelchair, no walking stick no nothing!
After I had loaded my wife’s wheelchair into the car, I approached one of car guards and asked him why this man was allowed to park in a bay designated for the disabled. The poor guy was a little speechless and said that this man merely says he has a business in the centre and he can park anywhere wishes! People are totally selfish.
I remember there were quite a lot of write-ups in the local newspapers a while ago regarding the problems with the public parking where they should not. At that time my wife was using a walking stick and, whenever we went shopping, I always had to double park to assist her out of the car and she had to stand there and wait for me until I had found a parking bay.
Because she was not using a wheelchair we were not allowed to park in disabled bays.
COBUS PIENAAR
