It was in September this year that we received a request to provide children’s wheelchairs from Mr. Sho Saito of Saito Kobo Ltd., who manages the NPO Sakura Wheelchair Project. He intended to send the wheelchairs with its electric wheelchairs to Milestone Society for Special Persons in Pakistan.
We got 37 children’s manual wheelchairs and 5 electric ones ready and delivered them to Bando City, the container loading area. We chose manual ones in good shape as there was not enough time for us to do complete refurbishing. As for electric ones, we asked Mr. Saito to do necessary maintenance. The partner in Pakistan is said to have ability to clean and refurbish wheelchairs.
Container loading at Bando City was done by Sakura Wheelchair Project members on October 15. There was no participant from our NGO. 130 electric wheelchairs (5 out of them are from our NGO), 200 batteries, and 37 manual wheelchairs were loaded into the container, which was brought into the container yard in Yokohama on that day and departed for the port of Karachi, Pakistan at 16:20 Thursday, October 27. It’s scheduled to arrive at Karachi port on November 13.
This is the second shipment to Pakistan this year, after April 2022. With the addition of the 37 units sent this time, we now have sent 117 units to the Milestone Society for Special Persons. Since the Society has high technology and strong organizational ability, we’d like to continue sending them wheelchairs in the future.
October 30, 2022 Secretariat
〇Container loading at Bando City
(Left)Packed and wrapped in green tape are children’s wheelchairs waiting to be loaded.
(Right)Manual children’s wheelchairs are loaded at the far end.
(Left)Inside the container is a shelf for loading efficiency.
(Right)Using the shelf, all the load was put into the container.
Loading finished. Great work!
Fifth from the left is Mr. Saito, president of Saito Kobo and head of the Sakura Wheelchair Project.