“Poverty increases the probability of being a person with a disability and disability increases the probability of falling into poverty,” states the the letter signed by more than 150 groups.
More than 150 organizations linked to the defense of the rights of people with disabilities published an open letter this Friday addressed to the President of the Republic, his ministers, parliamentarians and civil society.
They raise the need to include, within the measures that have been implemented by the Government, to help the most vulnerable population in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, people with disabilities. They maintain that both the COVID Bonus and the Emergency Family Income have the requirement of belonging “to certain groups of vulnerability”, without considering persons with disabilities within those groups.
“Poverty increases the probability of being a person with a disability and disability increases the probability of falling into poverty,” they say in the letter. “Let’s not forget that people with disabilities have always been one of the most vulnerable groups and the most transversal of all,” they add.
“Today we have a moral duty to reach people with disabilities with financial aid. The authorities have not had the capacity to understand the reality that each person lives in their context, they have limited themselves to only observing numbers given by ‘the experts’, but they have not had the necessary empathy to visualize the drama that can be lived in a family where there is one or more people with some degree of disability, and obviously they have tried to focus the aid once again ”, they indicate in the letter signed by more of 150 disability organizations and groups.
They maintain that it is not possible to continue using the Social Registry of Homes to grant aid to people with disabilities, this because COVID-19 has shown them that this instrument is not useful “when taking the pulse of existing reality “. “Many families have taken to the streets to protest because” they no longer have food “and this is going to increase, as we are unable to solve the economic problem,” they indicate.
“As people with disabilities and part of a group close to 3 million people, we believe that today it is necessary that the State, through the Government, send a bill, in which a monthly aid of $125,000 is delivered to each person with disability and for the duration of the pandemic”, they propose in the letter they made public this past Friday.
They indicate that this bill should reach the maximum of people with disabilities, and for them it is necessary to cross information from different databases such as the National Registry of Disability, Basic Solidarity Disability Pension, Invalidity Pension of any pension system; Pensions of Grace and “anyone who means that the person may have some degree of disability.”
“This must be cross-analyzed, so that the person receives only one aid from the State and also guarantees that the greatest number of people will receive it,” argue the organizations.
Specifically, they request that the Social Registry of Households should not be considered at the time of the delivery of financial aid, since in many cases, the person with a disability is linked to an adult as head of household, and therefore the income of other people to measure vulnerability.
“We all know that when there is a person with a disability in a home, it requires more spending. Aid should be granted today”, they stated.
