Rama to help PWDs, elders get convenient polling places

MANILA, Philippines - Mayor Michael Rama has assured the 70,000 senior citizens and 12,000 persons with disabilities in Cebu City that he will try to request for special precincts for them from the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

Rama wants that senior citizens and PWDs be provided with special precincts at the ground floor of all polling centers during the next year’s elections.

Rama made the assurance after Leonilo Omayan, president of the Cebu City Federation of Persons with Disabilities, asked for this during the press conference at the City Hall yesterday in connection with the celebration of the National Disability Prevention Week.

Omayan said it would be very difficult for the PWDs, including the senior citizens, to climb up to the upper floors of a school building just so they could vote.

The mayor had instructed his staff to facilitate a meeting with election officers Marchel Sarno and Edwin Cadungog of the north and south district, respectively, in order to find out if the request of the PWDs and senior citizens is feasible.

In the previous elections, Comelec officials assured that they will provide the elderly voters with precincts at the ground floor of the polling places in every barangay to make it easy for them to cast their votes.

However, they failed to fulfill their promise prompting some senior citizen and PWDs to not participate in the previous elections because of the locations of their precincts.

In Cebu City, the tallest school building where the old and differently-abled voters will be forced to climb in order to vote during elections, is the five-storey City Central School along Osmeña Boulevard corner P. del Rosario Street. — (FREEMAN)