A woman without legs was barred from entering BIR office for wearing shorts

Nancy Boroc photo from Manila Bulletin

A recent Facebook post of a woman without legs in Calbayog, Samar, who was barred from entering a government office, has gone viral.

Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) regional office was criticized by netizens after allegedly barring a woman born without legs from entering the premises because she was wearing shorts.

Nancy Torrelino Boroc, 27, shared her experience with the local BIR office on Aug. 5 in Calbayog, Samar. She went there to process a document request for her sister, but she was stopped by a security from entering the office.

Boroc, who was born with an Orthopedic disability, said that she was used to the discrimination.

According to Boroc, she was prevented by the office’s security guard to enter the office because she was wearing shorts. The security guard told them that he was only enforcing the rules of a new memorandum recently implemented.

“Kuya kahit po PWD (person with disability) na hindi nakakapag long pants?” Boroc asked the security guard.

Then the guard answered “Yes po dahil sa bagong MDR” (Yes because of the new MDR).

In an interview with Boroc, she said that a few days later when she went back with socks on her thighs, she did not face similar opposition, which may be attributed to the different guard on duty.

Boroc has a message to other person with disability, to prevent the same situation happening to other persons with disabilities, she said:

“I hope that any establishment, especially government premises should not be insensitive to PWDs. They should make their employees more aware so that they won’t tend to be bookish in the implementation of their memos.”

She wants to raise awareness about the reality of persons with disabilities (PWD) experience each day.

“I’m not posting to rant but to let people know about our daily life struggles and situations. We are PWDs, [we are the] same as normal people, we have rights and privileges and exemptions,” she wrote in her post.

After sharing what she went through with the BIR branch, her post has gotten close to ten thousand supportive reactions online, as well as shared more than 5,000 times as of writing.

Source: Politiko