Marine Area: “Denying people with disabilities work means depriving them of the freedom to self-determine”

There is a time in most teenagers’ lives when those questions are triggered: what do you want to be? What would you like to become, what is your dream job?

Rather common questions that ask you when you study, at the end of a training course, or simply when wondering about the future. There, these questions during those years they never asked me. At that time the disability began to have a greater impact on my life and before my eyes it began to reveal how much disability and work were two irreconcilable things for society.

On October 14th, with the message n. 3495, INPS announced that in order to receive the civil disability allowance, in addition to the health requirement it is necessary the total inactivity of work. This means that disabled people with civil disability from 74% to 99% will not benefit from the monthly assistance allowance, equal to 287 euros, if they work, regardless of the income threshold.

Such a decision is scandalous. First of all, it would discourage disabled people from looking for a job, even a small or temporary one, thus fueling illegal work. Then it shows that our country has never understood what it means to live with a disability, how many expenses a disabled person has to incur in his daily life: from the choice of accessible environments, which are often more expensive, to qualified personnel for assistance. All costs that a non-disabled person does not have. Furthermore, by doing so it is openly declaring that disability and work are not compatible, that a person who works is not really disabled and therefore does not need any kind of support.

It is evident that this provision lays its foundations on deep-seated prejudice that people with disabilities are unable to make a meaningful contribution to the community, who cannot learn and work. There has always been a low expectation around people with disabilities, which manifests itself through numerous discrimination during interviews or in the workplace. And in fact the data speak for themselves, according to ISTAT on average for 2016-2017, “31.3% of people between the ages of 15 and 64 are employed with serious limitations compared to 57.8% of people without limitations, in same age group. The disadvantage is even more marked for the female component, only 26.7% of women with disabilities are employed, while for men the share rises to 36.3% ”.

Work commitment is one of the aspects that marks the transition to adulthood, denying people with disabilities the opportunity to work means relegate them to a perennial infantile state, it means preventing their freedom and self-determination. It is essential that the culture and communication around disability change, that the political choices that affect us arise from a full awareness of what it means to live in a disabled body.

At this point I join the words of the journalist Valentina Tomirotti, who with the Association “Pepitosa in carrozza” has recently launched a petition to block the cut of the monthly disability allowance on change.org: “They wanted to give us a Ministry for disability to guarantee us protection, where is Minister Erika Stefani on these occasions?”