Disabled Iranians have turned to garbage scavenging and selling their wheelchairs to make ends meet in Iran.
In a June 9 report, the Roydad 24 website cited the problems and hardships of disabled Iranians; Problems that have increased unprecedentedly with the skyrocketing prices of various goods and services.
According to the report, a disabled woman identified by her first name as Moloud sold her five million toman wheelchair to pay the deposit of the house she wanted to rent in 2020.
Official statistics show that more than 1.6 million people in Iran are registered as disabled in the Welfare System, of which about 850,000 currently receive financial aid and about 300,000 to 400,000 are waiting to receive these benefits.
As Behrouz Morvati, the Director of the Campaign for the Disabled in Iran, has stated, the financial aid of a disabled person in Iran is currently 420,000 tomans, a very small amount to live on.
The director of the Campaign for the Disabled said that according to the law, people with disabilities should be given four million tomans as financial aid, but only get 420,000 tomans a month due to the non-allocation of the budget.
“The price of a 14-pack adult diaper package is currently 300,000 tomans,” says Morvati.
“A person with a severe disability is more dependent on diaper than food,” he added.
Morvati said the price of rehabilitation equipment was very high in Iran and “no one realizes that this equipment is necessary for the disabled.”
According to Morvati, the number of disabled Iranians who have turned to garbage scavenging has increased since last year, which is “very bad for a state that preached justice and religion.”
He also pointed out the difference in support for disabled war veterans compared to ordinary disabled people and said that at present “the right to nursing is eight million tomans for veterans and one million tomans for ordinary disabled people.”
According to the Faculty of Rehabilitation Sciences, there are currently 15 million disabled people in Iran, but the Welfare Organization says that only 1.6 million disabled Iranians have been registered by the organization.
The disabled and their endless problems have not been a priority for Islamic Republic officials in the past four decades.
The most important demand of disabled Iranians is the formation of a faction for the disabled in parliament. However, despite constant correspondence, this request remains unanswered by members of parliament. Some MPs have made promises in this regard that have yet to be fulfilled.
According to Shahram Mobaser, the CEO of the Institute for the Disabled, “a small percentage of the provisions of the Comprehensive Law for the Protection of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities have been implemented so far, and the formation of a faction for disabled Iranians can accelerate the implementation of the comprehensive law.”
“There is currently no news of a support faction for the disabled community, and we do not know whether it has been formed or not,” he added.
