AN Promises to support families with a disabled person

Malta Independent Tuesday, 26 February 2008, 00:00 Last update: about 14 years ago

Although he has been accused of having no compassion, he was the founder of Eden Foundation, the first organisation to start off the practice of professionally trained facilitators to work with disabled persons, Azzjoni Nazzjonali leader Josie Muscat told a news conference yesterday.

Eden Foundation was also the first organisation to believe that people with a mental disability could be trained to work, and receive a wage in order to live as “normal” citizens, he added, pointing out he was not saying this to boast but to show that he had always worked hard to achieve his ideas within the framework of the values he believed in.

Dr Muscat said he considered old age to be a form of disability when it reaches the stage where old people have frequent accidents if they are not supervised, and need help to walk and constant care, and that nobody can take care of old people better than their family members.

For this reason, he said, the government needed to give assistance to these families so that old people would remain within their care, or live on their own but helped by their family members, and that whoever is nominated to take care of a dependent old person/s, must be given assistance:

• By enjoying a reduction of income tax equal to the minimum wage;

• When the old person/s die/s whoever had taken care of them should benefit from a tax reduction for the time during which the elderly people were taken care of, as long as this period is not more than three years.

AN believes that the less of a burden old people are on their family members, the more the latter will be willing to help them out, and thanks to this financial assistance, the government would be able to save on the costs it incurs for running various old peoples’ homes which are becoming over-populated.

According to AN’s political manifesto pensioners should benefit from a pension which is never less than 60 per cent of average earnings, which is the level applied in Europe.

Dr Muscat also stated that AN is 100 per cent against abortion, and that children with a disability should not be eliminated by means of abortion. In order to assist families having a severely disabled person, it was also important to have no impediments to their education, and there must also be facilitators working in private schools, who are paid by the government, just like those who work for Church schools or the State.