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.
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
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