Government committed to improving services for disabled

The Government last year spent at least Lm10 million on services for people with disability, and this did not include other significant amounts spent on health care and medicines, Social Policy Minister Lawrence Gonzi said yesterday.

Speaking at the end of a seminar on the theme Flimkienaslu (together we will make it), held by the National Commission Persons with Disability, Dr Gonzi said the government had listed its priorities for the next 10 years and wanted to keep improving services being offered.

A shelter for people with disability would be opened in about two months' time and it was hoped that more would be opened in future so that people with disability who no longer had anyone to care for them, would find the care they needed there.

Dr Gonzi said the government was also looking at the legislative changes that needed to be made so that trusts could be set up to ensure that people with disability would benefit directly from money and assets bequeathed by their parents, relatives or third parties.

The biggest challenge, however, was to bring about a change in the mentality of both ordinary people as well as those with a disability. "Fifteen years ago one would never see a wheelchair-bound person in Republic Street, Valletta. We have come a long way since then, but we still have a long way to go," Dr Gonzi said.

He said the government had introduced the concept of inclusive education so that people with disability would grow up with other children and they would understand and accept each other. This would ensure that no one frowned upon persons with disability.

Dr Gonzi appealed to people with disability to make use of the equal opportunities law. This was a powerful tool they could use to better their conditions, but it needed to be used more often.

Dr Gonzi said there were certain jobs for which it made no difference if one had a disability or not. In order to encourage the employment of people with disability, the government had devised a scheme through which an employer was given up to half of the wages paid to people with disability for a whole year.

"Oddly enough, many employers kept these employees for a year and then dismissed them, which raises the question of whether these employers just wanted the subsidies," Dr Gonzi said. The government would refine the system and would be launching a pilot project next year," he added.

Labour leader Alfred Sant said there was the need for a concrete 10-year plan which would have clear financial and manpower plans on how to deal with issues related to people with disability.

He said the main four challenges were education, the setting up of respite centres, the provision of opportunities for work and care for people with disability who lost their parents.

Dr Sant said there were no easy solutions and issues could not be solved by waving some magic wand.

People at the seminar raised various issues ranging from a request for the political parties to produce their electoral manifestoes on tape to the provision of more parking space for disabled people, especially at St Luke's Hospital.

One person complained that not enough attention was being given to deaf children's education, so much so that there had been no deaf graduates yet.