Owing to the insufficiency of financial resources, it is hard to maintain the services asked by persons with disabilities from district councils. It goes to services included in special lists by the responsible authorities of the General Social Assistance and Family Protection Divisions. The problem was underscored by the chairman of the public association “Sustainable Social Services” Ion Digori in a news conference at IPN, where there were presented the results of the monitoring of the policies concerning the social inclusion of persons with disabilities.

The monitoring is conducted by the Alliance of Organizations for Persons with Disabilities of the Republic of Moldova (AOPD), which consists of 53 civil society organizations involved in the promotion of the observance of the rights of persons with disabilities.

The association “Sustainable Social Services” focused on the achievement in 2020 of Objective No. 1 – improvement of the persons with disabilities’ access to social protection measures in the community - of the Action Plan for implementing the National Program for the Social Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities for 2017-2021.

It was noted that to increase the implementation level of Objective No. 1, sufficient financial resources, skilled human resources, cooperation with the partners and with civil society organizations should be ensured so as to make use of all the resources available at the district and national levels.

Efimia Rusu, social assistant at the foundation “Toby Hawks Center”, monitored the implementation of Objective No. 2 of the program – improvement of the persons with disabilities’ access to high-quality medical, empowerment and rehabilitation services – in 2020. Efimia Rusu said that only 15% of the 11 planned measures were carried out . 60% of the measures were partially implemented, while 25% weren’t carried out.

Formulating recommendations, the expert noted that programs to insure the persons with disabilities in the case of diseases that necessitate continuous and costly treatment should be worked out and implemented and the budget used to implement such actions should be reported annually. The number of persons with disabilities who benefit from such treatment should be made known.

“It is worrisome as 15% of the planned activities were carried out, while 65% were only partially implemented. We therefore call on the authorities to take note and to take a responsible attitude so as to make progress in achieving the indicators proposed for this objective,” said Galina Climov, AOPD executive director.

The project as part of which the monitoring is conducted is supported by the Embassy of Sweden and forms part of a program implemented by East Europe Foundation in partnership with the Center “Partnership for Development”.