House discusses discrimination against disabled man

PARLIAMENT yesterday began examining a report by the Equality Authority involving a man with disabilities, who failed the entry exam for a job in the public sector.

The Authority felt the man in question was unfairly treated and discriminated against.

According to the Chairman of the House Institutions Committee, EVROKO’s Rikkos Erotokritou, the disabled man had been in the process of taking the exams when he was forced to take an obligatory break. This broke his train of thought and delayed him, resulting in him failing the test.

The Equality Committee felt the Supervisor at the time had failed to take the man’s special needs into consideration and he had therefore been treated unfairly.

Erotokritou said there were two main conclusions that came out of yesterday’s discussion, which will resume next week.

“The first is that the public sector’s Assessment Committees need at least one member with disabilities,” he said. “The second is that Supervisors need to be trained in order to know how to deal with people with disabilities, so we won’t ever have to deal with such cases again in the future. We will continue discussions on the matter with the aim of concluding on the best possible policy to avert such discriminatory phenomena.”

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