By Albanian-Montenegrin Diversity Team*
“A tiny revolution!” These are the words used by Albanian Ombudsman two months ago when he publicly announced they have decided that the number two person at the Ombudsman institution would be a disabled person. In the first days of January, there were two candidates for that job and the proposal was sent to the Parliament. But a month later, nothing has happened. Parliament says they will discuss the proposal, but have not said when.
Firstly, what does the law say?
The Law nr.7995, date 20.09.1995 (Changed) “To encourage employment,” says that every public employer (public institutions or public entities) and private companies must employ a person with disabilities for every 25 employees of the staff. According to this law, an employer can hire a person with very hard disabilities instead of five with small disabilities.
But what is the real story in Albania, 18 years after the law for employing people with disabilities was approved?
Dezdemona Orjeti is a professor. She works as a teacher for blind people for the past 20 years. Asked about the law, she says the law is good, but it’s not applied in Albania. According to her, it’s very difficult for a person with disabilities to find a job.
And the Ministry of Labor agrees with Dezdemona. Ilda Bozo, the director of Monitoring Strategies, says that the law has failed. “The employment of the persons with disabilities is a complex problem,” she says. “Not everyone is convinced that the persons with disabilities can work as the others. There are physical obstacles for them, even if there’s the good will.” Bozo says that the law in Albania was premature, because companies, especially when the law was approved, had only a small number of employees. “The law is in advance. It does not match with Albania’s development”.
The official numbers suggest that only 5-6% of the 140,000 people with disabilities are employed. Yet, life is really difficult for people with disabilities. There is no infrastructure in the country to help this group. If a person in a wheelchair wants to enter a building with stairs, there are no facilities to help. Tills in banks and post offices are not adopted for wheelchair users.
Dezdemona says that life for blind people in Tirana is almost impossible. “No traffic rule is respected, the pavements are occupied by street vendors and cafes keep their tables there too. And the worst of all, no one really cares. The indifference prevails. If you travel abroad, if a blind mangets lost, people try to help. Here everybody just waits to see him fall and laugh after that.”
But there is another problem, according to Bozo – apparently, disabled persons do not want to work. “Their mentality creates barriers for their employment. If the state provides high benefits for them, they are not eager to look for work.” Bozo insists that this category is well paid so in these cases, if they are offered a job, they do not except because the state pays them a good salary, their electricity bills, landlines, even their petrol.
But Dezdemona disagrees. “How can someone even think about this? To have a job for a person with disabilities is not only a matter of money, but a matter of personality and privilege too. If you work, people perceive you in a different way. They respect you. So it can’t be true what they say. Also, it’s not true all our bills are paid, and we don’t have good salaries. Last year the government decided to pay us only 2 000 Lekë for electricity and 1 000 Lekë for landline. And the petrol is paid for special categories, not for all. But truly, our electricity bills are usually too high. And the salary that we get, everyone knows, is not enough to live on. A general view is that we should be working only in the institutions that take care of peoplelike us, not in other places.”
And it is not just a problem in Albania, but throughout the Balkans. In Montenegro, disabled people face similar issues. Since 2008, there has a law mandating companies with more than 25 employees to hire people with disabilities. But in the last five years, according to the Association of Paraplegics in Montenegro, only 16 disabled people have been hired out a community out of 60.000.
There are two legal options. The first is to hire a disabled person. Otherwise, companies can pay into an employment fund, rather than hire a person with disabilities. In Montenegro, most companies prefer to pay into the fund. However, in Albania, the complaint is they neither hire disabled people nor pay into the fund.
Helga Miranovic is from Podgorica, Montenegro. She has been wheelchair bound since 1999 after a serious car accident. She is even fluent in five European languages, yet cannot find a job. “We do not want our government to give us money,” Helga says. “We want to have a job and to provide us with the facilities to live and move around. The willingness of the government to provide basic human rights to us can be measured by the fact that not a single disable person is employed by the Government”.
Some argue that there is a further benefit in hiring a disabled person. According to the law (in Montenegro and Albania), every private or public employer that hires someone with a disability,is relieved from paying taxes on that salary.
“People with disabilities are like all other persons. There are bad persons among them as there are very smart, intelligent and great persons. The latter ones have to be found and hired. And they can do a great job,” says Dezdemona, who is optimistic that maybe things will change for better. She knows at least three employments in the last two years: one in the social office and two by public radio. Happy to hear about the proposal by the Albanian Ombudsman to hire a person with disabilities, she’s looking forward to the response from Parliament.
On the other hand, the office of the Ombudsman says that they have no answer yet. They’re waiting. And this is what all persons with disabilities are doing. They are waiting for the Parliament to make the next step, to prove that they have no prejudice and that they will obey the law.
*Arlinda Gjypi, Dragana Čolović, Elisabeta Dosku, Gordana Badalovska, Suada Cenuka