People with disabilities demand increase in benefits

Disability rights groups on Tuesday demanded that the government offer them more financial benefits, saying that the government’s current plans to raise the total budget for disability benefits to €45 million by 2028 is not enough.

The demand was made in a letter signed by the Cyprus confederation of people with disabilities’ organisations (Kysoa), the federation of patients’ associations (Osak), the paraplegic organisation, and the third age observatory, which said President Nikos Christodoulides should create a “supplementary budget” to boost benefits for people with disabilities.

“We recognise once again, publicly, the current government’s political will for the implementation of the disability movement’s timeless and permanent demand, which will free disability benefits from the distortions of the guaranteed minimum income and its financial criteria,” they said.

They added that “one in two people with a severe or moderate intellectual disability” are left “provocatively invisible, on the sidelines” by the current state of affairs, and that the current budget “does not help in the implementation” of the government’s plans.

“At a time when existing benefits are required to be increased, they have remained stagnant for 20 years,” the groups said, adding that the amount of money spent on disability benefits fell from 0.7 per cent of Cyprus’ gross domestic product in 2023 to 0.6 per cent last year.

“This is because while state welfare for people with disabilities remains stagnant, our economy is growing and thriving, and thus our GDP has increased,” they said, adding that the “inevitable” result of this is that Cyprus fell to second-to-last in the European Union in terms of the proportion of its GDP spent on disability benefits.

“With current economic forecasts indicating further growth in our GDP, the approved amount will simply maintain us at current dismal levels,” they said.

They added that they are “not talking about numbers”, but about “people with disabilities in this country who, due to their disability, are driven to poverty and live invisible to the state.

“As we point out, with one voice, the four bodies, the Cypriot economy, yes, can do better than €45m over a three-year period,” they said, adding that “the growth of any human-centred economy must entail the substantial growth of the welfare state”.

They then said that the supplementary budget should be worth at least €65m.

Last month, the social welfare deputy minister of the day Marilena Evangelou had told the House finance committee that 12,000 new beneficiaries are to receive disability benefits as part of government reforms to the benefit system.

She said the amount allocated to disability benefits will stand at €26m next year, and that this will be the first time since the Republic of Cyprus’ independence in 1960 that there is an item in the government’s budget specifically earmarked for disability benefits.

This number, she said, will then rise to €35m in 2027 and to €45m in 2028, adding up to a total of €106m spent on disability benefits over the next three years.

The question of the GDP figures and the less than flattering comparison to other EU member states was raised by Akel MP Andreas Kafkalias, who pointed out that the EU average sits at over two per cent of GDP spent on disability benefits.

Evangelou’s response was that these figures are “one reason we are moving forward with correcting the deficits which have existed for decades”.

“People with disabilities are a group of people who need to be supported to come to light and to become all of our priority,” she said, while Diko MP Chrysis Pantelides said the government is “laying solid foundations so that it will never again be questioned if disabilities are a priority issue”.