Azerbaijan: people with disabilities complain about problems with receiving payments

Azerbaijani authorities have introduced new criteria for defining disability; and the review of the entitlement to benefits has led to delays in payments and refusals to certify disability, local residents have complained.

Now, there are about 600,000 people with disabilities in Azerbaijan.

Fazil Talybly, the head of the press service of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of Population, said that the country has introduced new criteria for defining disability in accordance with the international experience.

Experts make their decisions based on the ability of a disabled person to serve him/herself, move freely, eat and administer other natural needs.

During the 44-day war in Nagorno-Karabakh, Vusal Muradzade received two wounds – in the head and in the back bone. According to his story, for six months after the war, he has received not a penny from the state. Now, he is unemployed and lives on welfare, but has no complaints for authorities.

Nakhid Bakhshaliev, 33, is also a Karabakh war veteran. He believes that the decision granted to him by doctors is unfair, as the commission refused to award him the disability status under this decision.

Bakhshaliev is treated as a healthy person, but, according to his version, he is tormented by pains, and he cannot do any physical work. Only his wife works; and the family has about USD 129 per month left to live on.

Azerbaijani authorities have excluded about 1500 diseases from the list under which the disability status is awarded; therefore, those who had received benefits for years, now, after re-examination by the commission, have lost their allowances.

Because of the rise in unemployment, residents of Azerbaijan often try to get the disability status in order to live on welfare, said Sakhib Mamedov, the chairman of the Azerbaijani League for the Protection of Labour Rights. In his opinion, it is necessary to expand the list of diseases under which the disability status is awarded.