Tajik Disablement Laws Obstruct Access to Jobs

Friday, 20 August, 2010

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Davlatsho Shoetiborov

Bobosharipov, 27, is struggling to find paid work because, being classified as disabled, he is seen as unemployable. 

A resident of the Tajik capital Dushanbe, Bobosharipov uses crutches to get about because of leg injuries he sustained as a child while playing on a railway track.

He has had brief spells in work, first on the staff of a local education department, and then as an accountant in a school. The latter job paid the equivalent of some 30 US dollars a month, which barely covered his travel expenses.

If he had work, he would be the main breadwinner for his family, but he has been unemployed for over a year. One possible avenue – working as a taxi driver – is closed to him as a “category two” disabled person.

“To tell you the truth, I can drive as well as any taxi driver, but with category two disability, I’m unable to get a driving license,” he said. “I have knowledge and strength and I can work just like an able-bodied person. But for over a year, I’ve been unable to find a job paying a wage high enough to live on.”

Tajikistan inherited the Soviet Union’s three-tier official classification for disability, which decides what benefits and rights a person is entitled to.

All three groups are eligible for payments according to a graded system, though even those with the gravest “category one” impairments receive no more than 35 dollars a month. People who become disabled after a period in employment receive a pension worth 70 per cent of their previous salary, while those disabled from childhood receive only benefits.

Niyoz Qurbonov, head of the labour market department at Tajikistan’s State Agency for Social Welfare, Employment and Migration, explained that under current laws, only “category three” disabled people are deemed able to work and are therefore entitled to apply for jobs and claim unemployment benefit.

“People with category-one and -two disabilities cannot register as unemployed. They receive benefits and that means they don’t have to work,” Qurbonov said.

In addition to benefit payments, the first two categories receive 50 per cent subsidies on utility bills and free landline phone connections.

Asadullo Zikrikhudoev, the director of the Dushanbe Disabled Association, told IWPR there were many like Bobokhonov who were willing and able to work, but who were rejected at every turn because they were in the “wrong category”.

“Young disabled people who could work in any organisation get rejected wherever they go,” he said. “The reason is that the category-one and –two disablement certificates they’ve been given say ‘unfit for work’.”

Zikrikhudoev said that of the 7,000 people registered with his association, only one in ten has a job. The other 90 per cent have to scrape by on state benefits. Some are supported by their families, while others survive by begging in the streets and outside mosques.

Tajikistan is the poorest of the Central Asian states, with about half the population living under the World Bank-defined poverty line of an income of two dollars a day.

Zikrikhudoev said that in an economic climate in which everyone finds it hard to get work, the disabled at are an extra disadvantage, especially when they are officially classed as unfit for employment.

In his own case, Zikrikhudoev said, the disablement and child benefits he received added up to around 38 dollars a month, and he had a wife, mother, two sisters and a younger brother to support.

“I don’t need benefits. The main thing for me is to work with able-bodied people and receive a good wage,” he said. “I badly need a job; otherwise I will have to start begging at markets or on the street.”

The ministry of labour and social welfare says there are about 200,000 disabled people in a total population of 7.5 million, although experts say the true figure could be higher.

Government officials admit that there are problems with access to employment.

“Today, when able-bodied people cannot find work, it is even harder to provide jobs for the disabled. There are thousands of young and older people going off to work to Russia and other countries,” a labour ministry official who requested anonymity said.

Qurbonov said that under an overall job-creation plan, the government aimed to provide some 220 workplaces earmarked for the disabled this year and nearly 640 next year.

“The programme also envisages quotas requiring any organisation with 20 employees, whatever its line of work, to hire one disabled person,” he added.

The labour and welfare ministry has a special service which monitors the disabled employment. It can penalise employers who withhold rights due to their disabled workers – but it can also punish them if they take on staff officially classed as “unfit for work”.

Rahmatillo Zoirov, a legal expert and heads of the opposition Social Democratic Party, says this classification should not automatically exclude a person from employment

“The term ‘unfit for work’ needs to be defined more precisely. What it means is that these people cannot do some types of work, but are able to perform others,” he said. “People in category one except those with mental disabilities can still work from home.”

Qurbonov accepts that the legislation needed to be improved, and says his ministry is now drafting a new law to give people in all three categories the right to work.

At the moment, even hiring a category-three person classed as able to work can look unattractive to many employers. Zikrikhudoev said the right to a six-hour working day, 42 days of paid annual leave plus two unpaid annual leave period made employers reluctant to take on such individuals.

Zoirov says the government should exempt companies from certain taxes as an incentive for hiring more disabled people, and also return to the Soviet system of funding the various disabled associations to create work for members.

Turbek Davlatov, who heads Tajikistan’s Association for the Blind, recalls the old days when benefits were relatively better and the state set up special enterprises to employ the visually impaired.

These organisations, which came under the Association for the Blind, are now largely run down as their machinery has worn out and the household items they used to manufacture have been outpriced by cheap Chinese imports.

“We used to receive good salaries and we were able to build our own homes, Davlatov said. “Today, most blind people are unemployed and living below the poverty line.”

Davlatov says that of the 10,000 people with visual impairments in Tajikistan, only 640 are officially in work, and the real number is probably even lower.

“We have a serious problem with education. When blind people are unable to get a good education, have no profession and no job, they’ve got no choice but to take up begging in order to survive and avoid dying of hunger,” he said.

Davlatsho Shoetibor is a freelance journalist in Tajikistan.

This article was produced jointly under two IWPR projects: Building Central Asian Human Rights Protection & Education Through the Media, funded by the European Commission; and the Human Rights Reporting, Confidence Building and Conflict Information Programme, funded by the Foreign Ministry of Norway.

The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of IWPR and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of either the European Union or the Foreign Ministry of Norway.