People with disabilities voice demands during meeting with Anastasiades

People with disabilities on Wednesday asked for changes to 30 laws that are incompatible with modern approaches to disability and scrapping fundraising campaigns during a meeting with the president and four ministers.

The head of Cyprus Confederation of Disability Organizations (Kysoa) and Coordinator of the Cyprus Disability Alliance, Christakis Nicolaides, said it was the first meeting of its kind in the 45-year history of the organised movement of people with disabilities.

He especially focused on the chronic public access problems that deny people with disabilities the fundamental right of participating in an active social life.”

Nicolaides underlined the need for the state to put in place a meaningful and in-depth consultation with Kysoa, in a bid to “reduce the exclusion and marginalisation issues that the majority of people with disabilities often have to suffer.”.

He also called for the abolition of fundraising campaigns for people with disabilities and their organisations “which degrade the dignity and create a negative image of people with disabilities, while exposing our country to international criticism.”

Finally, Nicolaides called for an increase of existing financial benefits currently available to some groups of people with disabilities, regardless of their income and wealth, and to extend them to other groups of citizens such as those with autism and deaf people.