Eleven social services intended for persons with disabilities from residential institutions will be developed in 2020 and these will benefit about 60 persons. These could be deinstitutionalized and integrated into society. Minister of Health, Labor and Social Protection Viorica Dumbrăveanu told a news conference held on the occasion of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities that three social services to integrate 14 persons with disabilities will be launched this week, IPN reports.
According to the minister, 12 services have been developed since 2016, when the deinstitutionalization process was launched, and 69 persons with disabilities that could be deinstitutionalized and integrated into community benefited from these.
Viorica Dumbrăveanu said an initiative to increase the social benefits for persons with severe, accentuated and medium disabilities by 40% was drafted to support about 12,500 disabled people. The disability pensions and social benefits for almost 92,000 persons will be indexed twice a year.
A legislative proposal was drafted to review the procedure for deciding the right to disability pension so that this is based on the person’s existing insurance period, not on the person’s age and the required insurance period.
There were over 176,000 persons with disabilities in Moldova in 2018, with more than 10,000 of these being children. This is almost 7% of the country’s population.
As many as 1,874 persons with disabilities have been institutionalized.
