Due to dissatisfaction with the proposed legal solutions and the unfavorable position of persons with disabilities, protests by associations of persons with disabilities in front of the Government building of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) were held yesterday, on December 3rd at 11:59 p.m.
Representatives of associations from the FBiH area have nine requests for the Federal Government regarding the improvement of the status of this population.
“Everything stated in the requests is a good part of what has been bothering this population since 2016, since the amount of disability benefits and benefits for other people’s care and assistance have not been increased. For the 100 percent disabled and other people’s care and assistance amount to 384 BAM. Meanwhile inflation happened due to the war in Ukraine and some other economic changes so the prices have gone up drastically and the position of disabled people is not improving at all. The point is that there are many single mothers who have children who are 100 percent disabled, who are literally living of that money, and the families whose members are unemployed and to whom this, no matter how miserable, compensation is a large item in the family budget. This should be taken into account. The Government of FBiH has come up with some proposal on how to help, but it is not satisfactory because we are not were involved in that process, we were not consulted nor were we involved in making a solution that would be good for us. We cannot agree to that now and we ask that the Government of FBiH start negotiations with us as soon as possible in order to find a sustainable solution,“ explained Edo Celebic, parent representative and organizer of the protest.
“However, the Government rejected our initiative, they did not even want to consider it. They justify it by the decision of the Constitutional Court according to which they have the right to decide on the extent to which they will balance the relationship between disability benefits and some other benefits for war and non-war disabled people. They simply they don’t have enough understanding for us at this moment. We want to be partners of the government, not some enemies or a foreign body in our own country. We want our status to be improved, and the right address for that is the Government of the FBiH, whatever it is, now or some future ones. This is just one part of the campaign we are launching with the aim of improving the position of people with disabilities. The draft law on material support for people with disabilities that the government submitted to parliament is important for several reasons. One of the important things is that we ask that people who are 60, 70 and 80 percent of the disabled are reintroduced into the law. They are now completely discriminated against. We ask that Article 13 be completely withdrawn,” Celebic believes.
“Symbolically, at 11:59 p.m., our protest will begin. We will send our demands to the government, we will ask to start negotiations urgently. We will also ask for a one-time aid to be paid urgently to people with disabilities, exactly according to the model according to which they sent assistance of 1080 BAM to employees in public institutions. People with disabilities are no less valuable than them,” Celebic emphasized yesterday.
“We don’t have two lives to fight every two years with the FBiH Government about the rights that belong to us. We simply ask that these things be resolved as soon as possible. These are not some big demands, we are not asking for anything that is not possible, the only question is whether the government wants to talk to us,” Celebic believes, Klix.ba reports.
E.Dz.
