THE EUROPEAN Commission came up against a brick wall in Cyprus when it tried to gather information from the government for an EU-wide report on people with disabilities, it said.
“The collection of data about residential services for people with disabilities in Cyprus has proven a very difficult task. The establishment of key-contacts within the country has been impossible.
“We have tried to contact the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare several times but these tries were unfruitful,” said the damning report.
Even the information researchers did manage to obtain, after having to resort to the internet, lacked reliability and accuracy, the report said. Most of the data they found was six years old.
“There is very little information about both residential mental health services and residential social services,” the report added, referring to what they did manage to find without any government assistance.
The Commission said it had also asked different contacts with relationships and expertise working with Cypriot colleagues but they could not provide any data different to those already collected.
“Most of the data collected has been found through web searches,” said the report.
It said researchers were collaborating with a Greek speaking colleague in Cyprus “but she confirmed that there was no more information than that presented in English on the web pages of the Ministries of Health and Labour”.
The only other member state that displayed a similar total lack of co-operation with the EU researchers was Greece, the report said. The other EU countries had some shortcomings in their data collection and dissemination but only Cyprus and Greece had come up with nothing from the official side.
“It was not possible, despite repeated efforts, to identify anyone in Greece or Cyprus who could help with the project,” the report added.
The first of its kind, the EU-wide project aims to bring together the available information on the number of disabled people living in residential institutions in 28 European countries, and to identify successful strategies for replacing institutions with community-based services, paying particular attention to economic issues in the transition. It is the most wide-ranging study of its kind ever undertaken, the Commission said.
The interim report, final report and executive summary were prepared by the University of Kent and the London School of Economics, and on top of the embarrassment of not responding to the researchers, the government also came under fire over legislation relating to people with disabilities.
It referred to a law recently passed safeguarding the rights of the disabled and to adopting the principle of non-discrimination as provided by the UN’s Standard Rules on the Equalisation of Opportunities of Persons with Disabilities.
“The Law [in Cyprus] unfortunately selected only certain provisions from the Standard Rules, which do not impose any expenditure on the State,” said the EU report.
It said it was true the law established a special fund for financial assistance and support of people with disabilities for their social integration and vocational rehabilitation.
“It is quite astonishing, however, that according to the Law itself all the resources of that special fund are to be raised from the private sector,” the report added.
“It is obvious that there is a gap in the implementation of a system of legislation and administrative measures, including those for employment, which on the one hand should co-ordinate the private initiative, but on the other hand should extend, above all, the care and the social policy of the State itself, independent from the uncertain and unstable private initiative.”
It also pointed out that the law failed to apply a quota system for the employment of people with disabilities. A quota system has existed since 1990 as regards such employment in the public sector “but only in favour of war veterans and in favour of certain other categories of citizens, who are not persons with disabilities”, it added.
“This amounts to an apparent violation, in our opinion, of the Directive for non-discrimination of the EU, which consists part of its acquis.”
Cyprus is also in violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which requires states to collect data ‘to enable them to formulate and implement policies” and address the barriers faced by disabled people in exercising their rights.
“States ‘shall assume responsibility for the dissemination of these statistics and ensure their accessibility to persons with disabilities and others,” said the EU report.
