It was a summer day. Hot & Sunny morning, 10:30 AM. I was waiting, for my friend @ Anna Salai, Pondicherry (Thanks to very few living trees @ Anna Salai).
Within couple of minutes I noticed that many elderly couples were there with few covers / bags in their hands. The purpose of their visit was to a bank near by.
~95% of them were struggling to manage the steps @ that bank's branch. I had a closer look at those steps. Horrible is the right adjective to describe the status.... It was not clean... Corners of many of the steps were broken... damaged..
Initially thought there are only 4 or 5 steps .. then i realized that the bank is operating in the first floor... There was no support to climb on those stairs. First few of them were big.. and then smaller... Unevenly sized...
Those who managed climbing these stairs were finding it very difficult to come down.. Even noticed one using a nebulizer...I guess these senior citizens have to manage with this bank atleast once in a month. Every time they need to face this struggle... Oh, My God...
To add insult to the injury, there was a big Wine shop on the ground floor near by, which was easily accessible.. No steps at all...Colorfully decorated..
As a person who had to fight with this stepping stones day-in-day-out, i thought what can be the list of possible solutions:
- Making the branch accessible by having it in the ground floor (some where else.. if not in the same place).
- Providing a lift.. (Which i guess is a costlier solution)
- Providing the door-step banking facility for these senior citizens (Such a facility is/was there in banks like Axis Bank etc).
- Or worst case repair those staircases, keep them clean, provide a side hand-support rod on both sides of the stair case.
The first three solutions may be costlier. But the last one they can do with very less financial burden... Hope this would make banking a smoother experience for senior citizens.
Apart from this blog entry I have sent an e-mail to the concerned bank with these suggesstions....
Hope we would make our infrastrucutre easier to access for every-one... EVERY ONE....
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