Last Wednesday Verkhovna Rada held hearings On the Results of Conducting the Year of the Disabled in Ukraine in 2003. The issue in question was the social protection of persons with special needs and securing their social, economic, legal, and constitutional guarantees.
Minister for Labor and Social Policy Mykhailo Papiyev said at the hearings that programs and measures on the social protection of the disabled last year were financed in full. In 2003, according to the Ministry of Labor information, 366 million hryvnias was channeled to financing programs aimed at the social protection of the disabled. According to Interfax Ukraine, this includes financial support of all- Ukrainian public organizations of the disabled along with designing new prosthetic devices and servicing the disabled in hospitals and prosthetic enterprises. The program for qualified treatment, diagnostics, and sanatorium/spa treatment for the disabled also was fully financed.
Beginning July 1, 2003, the rate of pensions for the disabled military was increased by 10%. Simultaneously, Minister Papiyev said that today the level of minimum pension for the disabled is too low. In his view, by the end of last year it amounted to 142 hryvnias (compared to the official minimum wage of 342 hryvnias).
To solve the problems of this category of the population as a complex, head of Verkhovna Rada Committee on Pensioners, Veterans, and the Disabled Valery Sushkevych suggested creating a State Committee on the Disabled under the cabinet, since the efforts by various ministries and bodies on the social protection of the disabled, in the deputy’s view, today are not properly coordinated, while the Council on the Disabled of Ukraine is unable to provide such protection on its own.
Mr. Sushkevych also called upon the people’s deputies of Ukraine from both the opposition and the majority “not to make use of the problems of the social protection of the disabled an object for political negotiation and means for accusing their political opponents.” He emphasized that the problems of persons with limited capabilities “are beyond politics,” adding, “This is the problem of the whole society: not only of those riding in wheelchairs or having fundamental health problems but of everybody, regardless of our personal political views.”
