29 April 2014| last updated at 12:05AM
UNFAIR: The Damai Disabled Person Association Malaysia members are unhappy with temple’s committee for implementing a new rule which prohibits wheelchair-bound worshippers
PETALING JAYA: WHEELCHAIR-BOUND Hindu devotees were shocked when they were told that they were not allowed to enter the Maha Sivan Alayam Bukit Gasing temple grounds to pray, just because wheelchairs were no longer allowed there.
This is the blatant discrimination that Aveena Devi, 21, who is wheelchair-bound, had to put up with when she went to the temple recently.
A signboard at the temple states, among others, that wheelchairs are not permitted within its premises.
This ruling prompted members of the Damai Disabled Person Association Malaysia to stage a peaceful protest in front of Sivan temple's entrance gate recently.
Some 70 people including 50 members of the association, with their friends and families, turned up to voice their dissatisfaction over the matter.
Damai Disabled Person Association Malaysia president Murugeswaran Veerasamy, 44, said the peaceful protest was held to take a stand against the temple committee's unfair policy towards the disabled.
"Everyone should be able to go and worship where they want to, according to their own beliefs, whether it is a Hindu or Buddhist temple, mosque or church.
"It is also unfair that some places of worship are not disabled-friendly and bar members of the disabled community from going there to pray," he said.
Murugeswaran claimed that Sivan temple president T. Maharathan had said wheelchair-bound people were not be allowed to pray in the temple because the wheels of the wheelchairs might dirty the temple floor.
He also alleged that the president had cited space and safety issues as reasons for banning wheelchair-bound people from praying in the temple.
"This is not the right thing to do as solutions should be found to allow all Hindu devotees to pray at the temple. The Street, Drainage and Building Act of 1974 clearly states that religious buildings are also included in the list of places that the disabled community should have access to, just like every able-bodied person," he said.
Aveena's father Krishna Kumar, a businessman, said that he had already made a complaint to the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia and would file a lawsuit against the temple and its committee for the unfair ruling.
There was some drama after the press conference ended when Maharathan showed up and expressed his unhappiness at the members of the disabled community and the public for staging the protest.
After seeing that the protesters were not backing down from their demands, Maharathan finally agreed that the signboard outside the temple's gates which states that wheelchair-bound members were barred would be changed soon.
He also agreed to allow Hindu wheelchair members of the community to pray in the temple in future.
Read more: Protest against wheelchair rule - Central - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/streets/central/protest-against-wheelchair-rule-1.581518#ixzz30FlDeGSG
