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The Columbans are working with two groups of people with disabilities who now have over 30 people in wheelchairs. According to the Director of the Centre of Special Education, Manuel Duato, there are some 27 students with wheelchairs among its 200 students. Also, the Association for People with Special Abilities (ASPHAD), of which I am currently president, has seven people with wheelchairs among its 40 special people.
For the last three years we had been looking for some kind of a bus adapted to lift up wheelchairs, and set them down again on arrival at their school or home. This kind of special bus is necessary in Lima because public transport does not cater for people in wheelchairs.
Parents struggle each day to get them to classes or workshops. Drivers are reluctant to have the extra work of lifting a disabled person and the wheelchair into and out of a taxi, let alone a crowded bus.
As Manuel Duato finishes its daily classes by 1:00p.m, one special bus would be able to cater for wheelchair students, then have time to attend to the more adult people going to the ASPHAD Centre which functions from 3:00 to 6:00pm.
Students have to conclude their enrolment at Manuel Duato on reaching 18 years of age, whereas ASPHAD, not being a recognised school but a homely centre, invites its people to continue coming for the rest of their lives.
English Columban, Fr Ed O’Connell is president of the Civic Association Fe y Esperanza which oversees the management of Manuel Duato. He agreed that we should try to procure the right kind of bus for so many of our special people, who come mostly from quite poor families.
Being involved with both centres, I was deputed to look around for a bus properly adapted for our wheelchair people. Our local bishop, Monsignor Lino Panizza, kindly offered to help us bring in duty free a bus from overseas.
That turned out to be much easier said than done. For a couple of years enquiries to Japan and then the United States revealed that their factories were not willing to adapt their standard buses to suit our particular needs. Let local engineers do the adapting! So the next searcheventually took us to a Lima agency for International buses.
They had one 12 metre bus already fitted with a hydraulic lift and reserved space for a wheelchair passenger, but it was much too big to get in and out of the areas where we needed it. More promising was a nine metre chassis (including engine) they had left from last year’s stock, which we could buy and then take to a coach builder for a customer-designed bus coachwork.
We have bought that chassis for $43,000 and had it delivered to a coach builder only a kilometre away from Manuel Duato. The engineer is drawing up details of how to provide the best seating for wheelchair people and storage of wheelchairs as required. A lift for wheelchair and occupant is definitely part of the design.
Thanks to the long delay in finding such a bus plus the generosity of various countries, we had been able to put aside enough to buy the chassis. Now the remaining problem is how to pay for this new contract, for which we need another $46,000. Once again we appeal to you on behalf of these people with dependence on wheelchairs, so that they may be able to travel with ease and safety to both our centres.
Fr Chris Baker first went to Peru in 1977.
Read more from The Far East, November/December 2011
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