Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) has set up five subcommittees to ensure disabled people in the city have good health, education, income, transport services and a good management system.

The panels met on Saturday at City Hall to discuss the progress made in each factor. The meeting was presided over by deputy governor Sanon Wangsrangboon.

After the meeting, Sanon said BMA has met half of its legal quota of hiring disabled persons to cover 1% of its workforce or about 600 people.

“Currently some 300 disabled persons are working for BMA and we found that the biggest obstacle they face is travelling to work. Hence, we have decided to let them work from home from this month onward,” he said.

He added that BMA will soon launch a Live Chat Agent platform for which people with disabilities will be trained to provide customer service.

The platform, which was developed last August, will combine all customer service channels of 50 district offices and 18 BMA departments under one seamless channel.

“This platform will also help familiarise disabled persons with modern technology, and they can further improve their skills to become coders or application developers,” he added.

As for transport services, the deputy governor said BMA has selected a pilot area to upgrade all public infrastructure so it can facilitate people of all capabilities within next year.

The selected area is in the Ratchathewi-Phya Thai districts, starting from Victory Monument to Phya Thai intersection. Sanon said there are a large number of disabled persons residing in this neighbourhood, not to mention several hospitals that could benefit from the facilities.

The subcommittees also discussed the setting up of an online database for disabled persons in Bangkok that will ease their access to health services and jobs. The database will initially be accessed via BMA’s “Bangkok for All” official Line account. Sanon expects the Line account to attract at least 4,000 users this year.

As for education, BMA plans to train more than 6,800 teachers from 158 schools this year on techniques for teaching students with special needs. The city will also consider hiring more caretakers for disabled students at schools.