White Cane Path Project to be in use next year

The "White Cane Path Project", a 500m guided passageway for the visually-impaired and blind from the St Nicholas Home to the Midland One-Stop Centre in Burmah Road, will be ready by early next year.The RM200,000 project, funded by the Georgetown Rotary Club, will benefit more than 80 trainees of the St Nicholas Home and enable them to catch a bus or take the pedestrian crossing to the Penang Adventist Hospital.

The project's organising chairman, Ong Jin Cheng, said Tuesday the visually-impaired or blind had opted to walk along the busy Jalan Bagan Jermal and Jalan Burmah to the Midland One-Stop Centre because the walkway provided for them was uneven or obstructed by unwanted objects."Many of them fell into the drain and this prompted us to build the guided passage for them which will provide them with a sense of security, independence and pride," he told a news conference after the project's ground-breaking ceremony here.

Ong, a past president of the Georgetown Rotary Club, said funding for the project was raised through the Rotary Charity Golf, Rotary Car Wash and Long Island Youth Orchestra performance organised by the club."We hope the Penang Island Municipal Council will jointly carry out this project with our club through their consent to build the pathway and also to provide additional funding," he added.He said the club planned to build another pathway for St Nicholas trainees from the home to Gurney Plaza, located about a kilometre away, at a cost of RM300,000 to RM400,000.