“Voters sent a clear message... government must reconnect with the people,” Dr Busuttil said. “This means listening to the people, not just talking to them.”

The people, most of the times through their organisations, have been bringing to the attention of the government that not all is well in the disability sector. The majority of the Adult Training Centres are not functioning professionally; the residential homes for people with disability aren’t either; for years no more new residential homes were opened even though we used to be informed that the idea was to open one such home every year; the residential homes and the community services have a long waiting list; young adults who should have moved on from the education system to the Adult Training Centres are still ‘kept’ within the education system due to lack of space at the centres – this situation has been repeating itself for four years now; the supported employment scheme is not working – this notwithstanding the appointment of a high-level committee to discuss and plan a better policy. Once again the total exclusion of the representation of us voluntary organisations on this committee was noted and once again the present supported employment system is not giving results, especially to people with intellectual disability.

Until today, government still persists in not involving us organisations, who are directly concerned with our own issues – the disability issues – when discussing and planning policies which affect people with disability.

Government should be more responsible and involve us in all that regards us. Nothing about us without us! Instead of decreasing the budget directed to people with disability, government should have taken into account what we ourselves have repeated in the past years – see that all the present funds used by and for the disability sector is used more effectively. This measure alone would have surely brought about great improvement in the lives of people with disability. By not taking this step, and worse still, by substantially reducing the budget directed to the services for people with disability, the government has put the disability sector in a very precarious situation – another little negative push and everything will crawl down.

We are sure, at least we hope, that this is not what the government wants. But this is the reflection of his decision of the austerity measures and of not taking decisions to see that we are getting value for the money spent in the disability sector. Government listen!

Grace Zerafa

The Movement in Favour of Rights for Persons with a Disability