Yvonne Webb

George Daniel, the man who in 2007 fought the State from his wheel­chair for vi­o­lat­ing his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to lib­er­ty and won a vic­to­ry for the dis­abled peo­ple, has died. Daniel, for­mer pres­i­dent of the lo­cal chap­ter of Dis­abled Peo­ples' In­ter­na­tion­al (DPI) died at Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope, yes­ter­day morn­ing. Cur­rent DPI pres­i­dent Michael Fras­er con­firmed that Daniel passed away short­ly af­ter 8 am at the hos­pi­tal where he had been ward­ed for some time. Fras­er praised Daniel's con­tri­bu­tion to the dis­abled, say­ing it could nev­er be mea­sured.

Daniel is best re­mem­bered for his 116-day protest in 2003 un­der tents out­side the Na­tion­al Flour Mill, to get that com­pa­ny to change its hir­ing prac­tices. The protest stemmed from the NFM's de­nial to em­ploy two dis­abled peo­ple. Dur­ing his life­time, Daniel led demon­stra­tions through­out the coun­try, de­mand­ing bet­ter and more ac­ces­si­ble build­ings and fa­cil­i­ties for the dis­abled. It was this pas­sion and dri­ve which caused him on March 8, 2005, to file a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion against the State, be­cause of his in­abil­i­ty to ac­cess the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain. He con­tend­ed that there were no wheel­chair ramp and the long flight of steps at the front of the build­ing made it dif­fi­cult for peo­ple like him­self to be pulled up the steps back­wards.

At­tor­ney Anand Ram­lo­gan, who rep­re­sent­ed Daniel in that mat­ter, had asked the court for an or­der di­rect­ing the State to break down the steps at the front of the Hall of Jus­tice with a view to re­design­ing and re­con­struct­ing the same to cater for wheel­chair-bound cit­i­zens. Speak­ing by tele­phone from Cana­da last night, Ram­lo­gan said it was a shame and a dis­grace that more than two years ago, Daniel won that his­toric vic­to­ry to en­sure the dis­abled would gain ac­cess to the Hall of Jus­tice and to date, that or­der has not been com­plied with. "I have ap­pealed that mat­ter to the Privy Coun­cil and I in­tend to pur­sue that in mem­o­ry of George," Ram­lo­gan said.

He said de­nial to the Hall of Jus­tice meant that dis­abled peo­ple were un­able to mean­ing­ful­ly par­tic­i­pate in the jus­tice sys­tem as ju­rors, at­tend court, give ev­i­dence or sim­ply vis­it to lis­ten to a par­tic­u­lar case. "George was a per­son­al friend and a source of in­spi­ra­tion...He gave the dis­abled a voice and a face in Trinidad and To­ba­go and forced the na­tion's con­science to con­front the way they treat dif­fer­ent­ly-abled peo­ple as an is­sue," Ram­lo­gan said.