EDITORIAL — A uniform PWD ID

It would seem that the issuance of fake Person With Disability IDs is no longer a local issue. More restaurants and establishments in the capital region are complaining of this.

An ABS-CBN report quotes one restaurant owner as saying that when before PWD ID discounts only accounted for 5% of their daily sales, now it has increased to 10 to 15%.

“We’ve experienced na sa 10 person na mag dine in, out of those, mga 6 yung PWD card holders, and minsan questionable kasi you see them physically na abled naman and hindi naman kasi kami nag-base dun sa nakalagay na disability sa card. Once nag-pass sila ng PWD ID, syempre we apply the discount right away kasi wala naman tayo verification process,” said the manager of that restaurant in the same report.

If you can recall, fake PWD IDs also became an issue here recently after a Cebu City Hall employee was blamed for allegedly selling fake PWD IDs, in a separate incident a printing shop was also raided for printing fake PWD IDs.

Perhaps it would be best if the national government comes up with a uniform look for PWD IDs. And, if the public at large doesn’t deem it discriminatory, mention what specific disability the bearer has, that way awkward questions are avoided.

One thing that the restaurant manager pointed out was that it was hard determine the legitimacy of a PWD ID because different LGUs have different templates and looks for their respective PWD IDs. Some LGUs have QR codes on their IDs, other didn’t. Some issued their PWD IDs in PVC plastic, others just printed them on ordinary paper.

Again, there are many PWDs who don’t have a PWD ID while, on the other hand, it would seem that some people who don’t have disabilities are freely using PWD IDs to get discounts and other courtesies they aren’t supposed to get.

This is unfair for PWDs and owners of establishments. The sooner this practice is stopped the better.