People with disabilities over 70.1% according to their Labor-expert medical commission decision from January 1, 2021 will be entitled to a personal assistant. This was finally decided by the deputies today after serious debates in the plenary hall.
Children with more than 90% disabilities will also be entitled to personal assistance.
Until now, they were also entitled to one, but for adults the percentage was also over 90 percent.
Initially, the government had announced that from next year all people with disabilities will be entitled to personal assistance. However, they later gave up because their accounts showed that it could cost more than BGN 1 billion. Thus, again some of these 670,000 people with disabilities in our country will remain disadvantaged.
The opposition did not support the ruling party’s proposal. Nadia Klisurska from the BSP stressed that there may be a person with 50% disability who urgently needs a personal assistant and gave the example of a citizen who is a pandal, broke a femur and has no relative to take him to work. Therefore, according to Klisurska, it should not be assumed that the TEMC decision is fundamental when deciding whether to provide personal assistance or not. According to her, an individual needs assessment should be made.
The chairman of the social commission Hassan Ademov also criticized the plenary tribune. He stressed that those who fall outside the scope of the Personal Assistance Act fall within the scope of the Social Services Act in order to be able to receive assistance. He stressed that teams make the needs assessment, but the management does not have information on how many hours will be provided, despite the fact that there is a methodology on the issue. And because they do not have this information and there is no way to get what the government aims, they simply determine a financial resource of BGN 214 million in one law and BGN 85 million in the other law and according to the money indicate people’s access to assistance, which is wrong.
The BSP also spoke about the salaries of the personal assistants themselves. Currently, they receive 1.2 times the minimum wage, which means BGN 780 from January 1, 2021. The idea was to increase this ratio to 1.4, but that didn’t happen either. Anton Kutev was adamant that many Bulgarians work as assistants in Greece, because there they receive 1,200 leva for this work.
He stressed that the mayors in our country are really worried about where to find assistants and therefore the only possible option is to raise the salary.
Despite all the arguments of the opposition, the ruling party accepted the texts as they had envisioned.
