April 27, 2012 - 17:46 AMT
Legislation on disabled is good but lame in practice

There are 170000 disabled people in Armenia who have no representative in the parliament, and their rights are being ignored and violated, NGO chairman told the journalists.

Arman Musheghyan, head of World Without Barriers NGO is running for the National Assembly by proportional list of Heritage party as independent candidate.

According to him, rights of the disabled are being voiced only ahead of elections.

“One should bear in mind that apart from being a constituency, these areas are public and social spots, and disabled people must also use them. If a person has no opportunity to leave his home, it is no longer important whether constituencies are accessible for them or not,” he said.

For his part, Support and Right NGO chairman Mher Vasilyan mentioned that Armenian legislation related to disabled is pretty good; the problem is it is not put into practice.

“If all adopted laws were implemented, 90 per cent of problems faced by the disabled would be solved,” he said.