ARMENIA REFORMS DISABILITY RULES
Radical change will encourage disabled people to work if they can, but
some experts fear new system could prove as unfair as its predecessor.
By Gayane Mirzoyan – Caucasus CRS Issue 674, 4 Feb 13 Armenia is about
to introduce major changes to the way disabled benefits are assessed,
so that people will be categorised according to their ability to work.
Experts point to a shortage of workplaces with proper accessibility
in Armenia, and warn that the new classification system might be just
as open to corrupt practices as the current one.
Until now, the health authorities have put disabled people in one of
three categories, ranked by severity of impairment. Category one is
the most serious, category three the least; and this determines the
level of disability benefits that the state pays out to each.
The employment register currently shows 170,000 registered disabled
people in Armenia, of whom 90,000 are considered to be able to work
to some extent.
The authorities plan to replace the current system with one based
on models used in Lithuania and the Czech Republic. It will take two
years to launch, during which time the method for assessing disability
will be refined.
Jemma Baghdasaryan, deputy minister for labour and welfare, explained
that anyone classed as able to work would be provided with a job,
and would then lose disability benefits.
“People will be deemed to be disabled if they have lost a certain
percentage of their ability to work,” she explained. “For children,
the criteria applied will be ‘activeness’ and ‘engagement’.”
Marianna Chalikyan, spokeswoman for the disabled rights group Unison,
doubts that the conditions exist to make the change so quickly.
“Under the new system, they will assess individuals’ state of health
and circumstances, and then assign them a level of employability.
[Most workplaces] are totally unprepared for this,” she said. “If
you look at the state of the country as a whole, it is not ready to
provide work, so an employer who wants to take on a disabled person
will have problems.”
Anna Khachatryan, a lawyer with Unison, expressed concern at the
way the criteria had been drawn up for the new classifications. She
said concepts like “ability to move around” and “ability to work”
were defined in very broad terms, so someone might be assessed as
fit for work if even they had only limited mobility.
The current system, where people come before a medical commission
to be placed in one of the three categories, is widely accepted as
being open to abuse.
Last September, the government sacked the head of the labour
ministry’s medical examinations agency after hearing the results of an
investigation which found that 65,000 people paid bribes every year
to be classified as disabled. Investigators found that the bribes
ranged from 15,000 to 150,000 drams, or 37 to 370 US dollars.
Karen Hovhannisyan notes that the reverse is common, too – people
who are undeniably disabled but find their status is downgraded or
annulled altogether when they appear before a medical commission.
Marat Atovmyan, a lawyer who heads the Anti-Corruption Centre in
Yerevan, cited the high-profile case of Armenui Arakelyan, a disabled
woman called before an army conscription commission in 2011 after
her son asked to defer his military service on the grounds that he
was a carer.
At the hearing, three doctors downgraded Arakelyan’s disability
category, and that of her husband as well, so that their son could
no longer claim the right to a deferment. The Anti-Corruption Centre
stepped in and helped her reclaim her original disability status.
Atovmyan and others argue that the new system of categorisation is
liable to be just as arbitrary.
“The structure needs to be made more transparent so as to reduce
the risk of corruption,” he said. “Professional doctors often can’t
tell from a diagnosis which category a patient should be assigned
to. It’s natural that lawyers and judges find it hard to discern what
is illegal, since there are no clear categories.”
Under the new system, Hovhannisyan predicts, “the number of appeals
will rise”.
Gayane Mirzoyan is a freelance reporter and a media expert with the
Journalists for the Future group in Armenia.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
