The Rise Of Australasia

Chapter 772 - 577: 3 Major Demands and 3 Major Policies_1

The so-called special road can only help the blind, but it is also a significant effort in protecting the interests of people with disabilities.

Historically, such roads would not appear until several decades later, but the early emergence of the special road now is hoped to improve the living standards and happiness index of Australasians with disabilities.

Sydney made the quickest changes, especially in the urban area, by laying special roads about 40 to 50 centimeters wide, with distinct colors and recognizable patterns that give a clear sense of unevenness underfoot to help the blind identify the scope of the special road.

After the completion of Sydney’s special road, the same newspaper reporter Daisy Dodridge also made a special trip back to the blind school she had previously visited, inviting that blind child to walk on the newly built blind people’s streets in Sydney and experience the feeling of walking alone on the street.

Of course, although it’s said to be walking alone on the street, there are still other people accompanying her to ensure that no accidents occur.

Finally, a smile appeared on the face of the blind child, now filled with happiness.

As the special road holds significant importance to the blind, it was quickly incorporated into their curriculum.

The blind school will also establish a demonstrational special road, allowing many blind individuals to become acquainted with the road that enables them to walk on the street while inside the school, and to better distinguish between ordinary and special roads.

From mid-June, there was a noticeable increase in the number of blind people on the streets of Sydney, exploring and walking on the special road, accompanied by warm-hearted people watching over them, preventing any potential accidents.

This special road that allows the blind to leave their homes has been affectionately called the love passage and has received lavish praise from various media and newspapers, eliciting deep gratitude from the blind community and their families.

However, the establishment of the special road wasn’t just good news. The first issue was the Nationwide cost of road reconstruction, which involved designing special roads and modifying existing ones, with an overall budget that was too vast. Moreover, in areas with few blind people, the transformation seemed unnecessary.

The second issue was that the special roads were easily occupied by other individuals or vehicles. Since blind people cannot see, if there are dangerous obstacles ahead, the existence of the special road becomes a significant risk.

In response to these two problems, the Cabinet made some improvements to the special road construction after consulting with Arthur.

First was the scope and budget of the special road construction, which shifted from transforming all urban cities Nationwide to only the big cities with a higher number of blind people.

As a result, the cities now needing transformation are just Sydney and Melbourne, along with the capital cities of All States, while Small Towns are not yet in need of such developments.

The City Councils of these Big cities could generally bear the cost of road modifications themselves, meaning the special road construction would hardly need any government funding, which was good news for the government’s Finance.

Moreover, although the scope of special road construction was reduced, it would still facilitate the majority of blind individuals to venture out of their homes.

After all, the disabled population in Australasia wasn’t large to begin with, and the community of blind people was even smaller.

That is one aspect where Australasia is doing better than other countries, providing an excellent compensation system for soldiers who were disabled in war and for veterans.

This also makes the morale of the Australasian Army comparatively very high; with sufficient morale, the Military’s combat strength becomes much stronger.

There are many rights that disabled people need to have secured, which can roughly be divided into the rights to education, work, and a normal life.

The right to education is relatively easy to solve. Sydney and Melbourne already have a significant number of schools for the disabled. Furthermore, by encouraging other big cities to build corresponding blind schools and schools for the disabled, the educational rights of most disabled people can be ensured.

This investment isn’t actually that large, after all, the number of disabled people within Australasia isn’t that high.

Therefore, the actions taken by various Urban Cities and the government are swift. Many cities have already brought the issue of schools for the disabled to the table, and some have even been approved for funding by the local City Council.

The right to work is harder to secure, as in most positions, ordinary people have a significant advantage over these disabled individuals, and Capitalists would not harm their own interests to specifically recruit these disabled individuals.

So to ensure these disabled people’s right to work and to improve their income, we have to find ways to create more suitable positions for them or positions that wouldn’t be affected by their disabilities.

However, such positions are quite rare, and most positions still require physically fit individuals, even those capable of physical labor, which greatly diverges from the circumstances of the disabled.

To improve the standard of living for the disabled, the government can only turn to another aspect, which is increasing subsidies for the disabled.

This task has been entrusted to the Royal Relief Committee. The Relief Committee can establish connections with the City Councils, further clarify the number of all disabled people, and discuss certain subsidies with the government.

However, it’s most likely just subsidies in terms of supplies, to ensure that disabled people can also live like ordinary people, especially in terms of food and housing.

Another area is the needs concerning their normal life. Encouraging the public to treat the disabled kindly, forbidding discrimination against them, and paying attention to areas where the disabled have more difficulties, such as building special roads alongside stairways, etc. These require Nationwide efforts to promote.

Although a large part of these policies has only just begun to be implemented or even planned, they already represent great hope for those disabled individuals.

The responses of disabled individuals reported by Newspapers also show that this group is very grateful for the attention of the government, Parliament, and all Australasians. The incident regarding this special group of people has thus come to a satisfactory conclusion.

The disabled community is quite grateful to the government, and the public is very pleased with the outcome; one can say it is a comparatively good result.

Because of Arthur’s timely speaking out during this incident, and the prompt reactions of the government and Parliament, the public is quite satisfied with the government, and the country’s cohesion has been invisibly increased.

This is actually quite simple. As long as the public can see the government’s efforts and their care for the populace, that is already enough.

Perhaps what the people want isn’t a perfect result, but genuine concern for citizens’ basic living needs, from Arthur to the All States, to the City Council members, rather than just talk.