HEALTH: Russia's Disabled Face Uncertain Future By Sergei Blagov
----
Yuri Tkachenko, 34, a disabled from Donestk region in eastern Ukraine, was lured to Moscow by two mobsters from Moldova. They promised him a decent job at prosthesis factory and a monthly salary of 150 dollars.
---- This guy's gotta be incredibly naive. ----
That case was uncovered by Moscow police, but many other disabled beggars are known to be at the mercy of criminals, according to social workers. ---- I think this is the case with most beggars (and anybody who sells stuff on the street, busks in the metro, etc.). They pay a cut, probably to the cops too. ----
Official figures put the number of disabled persons in Russia at 6.4 million, but sociologists said the actual number is about 10 million. According to official estimates, only one tenth of Russian disabled live in relative comfort, while two thirds are in desperate situation. ---- Ten million's real high, unless you're counting people too old to work. That's 1/15 of the population. ----
The high number of disabled include many pensioners with minor ailments who seek the status of disabled to get privileges, because their pensions are inadequate. Apart from the elderly, there are more than a million disabled children in Russia, according to official estimates. ---- Whoops, makes my point. ----
Russia's parliament approved a populist bill in 1995, granting hundreds of privileges to the disabled - but the current economic crisis that has emptied the state coffers has meant these obligations have not been honoured.
---- There is no economic crisis at present (which doesn't mean that these people are getting more than a pittance, but anyway). ---- The assistance - such as free bus or subway tickets - was estimated to cost Russia some 4.3 billion roubles (about USD 600 million at pre-crisis rate). ---- Disabled people (as well as vets, Heroes of Russia or the Soviet Union and Russia and pensioners) DO ride the metro and bus for free. Seriously desabled people may be physically unable to take the metro, though. There is no alternative means of ingress, and those escalators are steep and DEEP. ----
According to official statistics, some 30,000 children - labeled retarded - are confined in these institutions, which are ''little better than prisons.'' ---- This is a serious exaggeration (especially if you're comparing them to a Russian prison!), though the orphanages are in bad shape and do little to prepare children for the future. Some charities are trying to address the problem, however (I worked at a Russian alternative orphanage, in fact.) ----
Before the Soviet break up, limbless persons could receive an artifical device from the government but now the majority simply cannot afford to pay up to 2,000 dollars for a modern prosthesis, he said. ---- They had to wait a long time, though. I think you can still get a free one, but you may have to wait years. ----
The Russian government allocated 500 million roubles to provide free prosthesis this year - compared to the 330 million last year. But devaluation meant that this actually represented a cut in funding of about 35 million dollars - and could be even further reduced if the financial crisis continued. ---- Oh, I see. I take it this article was written in 1999, post-crisis? ----
Private charities have yet to emerge as an alternative to state funding and suffer from a poor image dating from Soviet times, when workers had ``contributions'' automatically deducted from their wages and put into state-run charity funds. They rarely saw their money doing any good. ---- Charities have a bad image because many have been money-laundering fronts.