Dear friends, appreciate if you can help to share this. According to IS Cleaning Services Pte Ltd, NON-HANDICAP PERSON HAS NO RIGHTS TO USE THE HANDICAP TOILET. Here is what had happened on 23 May to someone close to me:
She was in Compass One mall around 2pm when she had an urge to use the toilet. However she was alone pushing a stroller with her sleeping baby which was unable to fit in a normal toilet cubicle size and there were no family or child-friendly toilets, so she had no choice but to use the handicap toilet.
After entering less than 5 mins, she heard 2 men talking very loudly outside the toilet and suddenly knocked on the door. She immediately responded that she was using the toilet. But it appeared that the person who knocked on the door didn’t hear her response since he was conversing loudly with another man. The 2 men continued to conversed loudly while knocking another 2 more times. Again, she responded to the knocks.
Suddenly the door was flipped opened widely while she was still in the midst of using the toilet and she saw a male cleaner with his male supervisor. The supervisor immediately stepped aside but the cleaner just stared blankly at her. The woman was totally shocked and embarrassed but regained her composture after a while and told the cleaner to quickly close the door, which he only did so after hearing her. During the time when the door was opened, there had been a passerby who walked passed and saw the woman in the toilet without her bottoms.
The poor woman immediately dressed up and got out of the toilet. The 2 men were still standing outside. She asked them why did they opened the door when she was still inside. They said that sometimes there are naughty children who played with the door. The woman demanded to see the mall management and wanted to make a complaint. The supervisor just pointed her to the direction of the mall reception. As the woman turned around and walked towards the reception, she heard the supervisor commenting loudly to the cleaner, “handicap toilet is only for handicap people, non-handicap people cannot use!”
Thereafter, there was a meeting with the mall centre manager and the management of the cleaning company. The centre manager suggest the cleaning company to look into this and settle the issue. The cleaning company requested for time to investigate and promised to give the woman an official letter. However, the letter came late, 1 week after the promised date.
The worst part is the content of the letter where the cleaner denied hearing any reponse from the woman when the cleaner knock on the door (since the cleaner and supervisor are chatting loudly to each other outside the toilet and cannot hear anything).
Secondly, in the letter, they mentioned the poor woman has NO RIGHTS to use the handicap toilet.
Anyway, a police report had been made. The letter from the cleaning company is also attached in this post.
Am sharing this unjust treatment of a poor mother to raise people’s awareness, especially mothers with strollers and babies who need to use the handicap toilets, that cleaners have keys to open the doors. Use the handicap toilet at your own risk.