People with Disabilities Gather to Protest Living Conditions and Budget Cuts in Several Cities
A number of people with disabilities gathered on Saturday, December 3rd, in Tehran and other cities to protest against living conditions and the reduction in the budget allocation for the Law on Protection of People with Disabilities for the next fiscal year.
Based on images published on social media, some of these individuals gathered in front of the Organization of Planning and Budget in Tehran holding banners and demanding the implementation of the disability law.
Meanwhile, reports of similar protest gatherings in other cities, including in front of the Khorasan Razavi Province Governorate in Mashhad, have also been published.
Creating employment opportunities for people with disabilities by allocating at least three percent of government and public agency recruitment permits, standardizing buildings and public facilities for disabled persons’ access, and insurance coverage for medical and complementary services are among the provisions of the 16-article Law on Protection of the Rights of People with Disabilities in Iran, which was promulgated by the twelfth government in May 2018.
However, many organizations and advocates for the rights of people with disabilities have criticized the failure to implement the articles of this law and the authorities’ disregard for it in recent years.
Meanwhile, what has been the subject of the recent protests by Iran’s disabled community is the reduction in the budget allocation for the Law on Protection of the Rights of People with Disabilities for the next fiscal year. The budget designated for implementing this law in 1400 (2021-2022) was two trillion tomans, but in the next year’s budget bill, this amount has been reduced by 130 billion tomans.
These protest gatherings are taking place on the occasion of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, coinciding with the cancellation of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities ceremony, which was supposed to be held on Friday, December 3rd, with the presence of Ebrahim Raisi and one hundred people with disabilities from across Iran in the Leaders’ Conference Hall in Tehran, which had confused the attendees.
The ceremony was canceled “without prior notice,” and after criticism was directed at the government for this reason, Ebrahim Raisi held a late-night meeting with a group of managers of disability associations; however, according to the “Disability Campaign” Twitter account, “no explanation” was provided in this meeting regarding the reason for canceling Friday morning’s ceremony.
This Twitter account, which covers news and developments related to people with disabilities, had protested in a tweet against Ebrahim Raisi’s “indifference” to people with disabilities on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.
Meanwhile, the Disability Campaign in a statement issued on the occasion of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities on December 3rd (December 3rd), referring to the consequences of COVID-19 for people with disabilities, stated that the budget allocated for the next year in no way aligns with economic inflation and the actual needs of people with disabilities.
In this statement, criticizing “the grandiose slogans of the election period,” it was noted that the government and parliament have no plan to change the current dire situation and implement the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Law on Protection of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Various statistics have been published regarding the number of people with disabilities in Iran.
According to the latest statistics from the Welfare Organization, more than 1 million 710 thousand people with disabilities have registered files in Iran, but Hamayun Hashemi, a representative to the Iranian Parliament, stated in 2018 that there are 10 million people with disabilities in Iran, of which four million suffer from severe or very severe disabilities.
Source: Radio Farda
