Postcard from Bishkek

No, despite the title, this postcard is not about aliens landing on earth and appearing in Bishkek.  It was the title, (or at least part of the title), of a recent blog post, (in Russian), about life here in Kyrgyzstan and I quite liked the theme, so I admit that I adopted it for this postcard.  The full title of the post was “People with disabilities – Martians or all the same earthlings?”

It was based on an incident which hit the headlines here recently, when a girl in a wheelchair was denied entry to a Bishkek nightclub because the management felt that they could not accept responsibility for her safety, (or that of other guests), given the fact that she in a wheelchair.

She was an interpreter working for a firm in the city who had arranged a “corporate night out” and invited all their employees to come along – including her.  Having said at first that she couldn’t enter, the management seems to have agreed that if she paid an additional fee she could be taken to the second floor but not descend to the floor where the dance area was located.  Some of her colleagues were very upset by this and protested, but in the end the additional fee was paid and she was duly allowed up to the second floor.   Apparently the incident spoiled the mood for everyone … except for the girl herself, who seems to have taken it for granted.

Not only did this story hit the media, it also created quite a stir in the most popular internet forum in the country … and led to the blog post.

It was interesting Cri de Coeur drawing comparisons to the experience of people with disabilities in the West, (one of the contributors to the discussion having lived in London and outlining some of the differences they had seen and experienced).

Unfortunately, it is true that, as the post concluded, “this case shows that people with disabilities do not have access not just to this club, but also to most other clubs, shops, cafes-restaurants, cultural facilities, playgrounds, schools, kindergartens, health clinics, to work, to the departures abroad, the choice of rooms in a hotel.”

That happens to be true … and I have to admit that, for example, we have a serious problem with the guesthouse in Naryn, where we bought an existing building, and like most of the public buildings in Kyrgyzstan, it is not have good access and is not really possible to adapt.  On the other hand, when we built the Silk Road Lodge we made a point of installing ramps and although the lift is small, it can take a wheel chair.  It’s not ideal, but it’s a vast improvement on Naryn.

 

This story was not the only one that involved people with disabilities that have come to my attention recently.  For example, in one of the smaller museums there is to be a month long photo exhibition, “Reflection of the Soul”, which is a joint project of the photographer Tamara Kubayeva and the “Nazik Kyz” Association of Girls with Disabilities, presenting about 20 photographs showing depicting the girls as “the same, girls like everyone else”.

For the record:
Venue: T. Sydykov National Academy of Arts,
Togolok Moldo 50, At the intersection with Ryskulova
Tel.: 324743
Open :  Monday-Friday – 09:00-16:00

Then there is the initiative of one of the Parliamentary deputies concerning a measure in the law “On the Rights and Guarantees for People with Disabilities”.  The law provides a requirement that the workforce of any firm with more than 20 employees includes a quota of 5% of people with disabilities.  Unfortunately this provision in the law doesn’t work.  So, the deputy wants to introduce a new measure which would require that any firm that failed to meet its quota would make a contribution to a special fund that would be earmarked for work with this particular target group.

I am told that at a public consultation meeting, (I wasn’t there), that most of the representatives of the business community were not happy with this proposal.  That doesn’t surprise me.  Apart from the general misunderstandings about people with disabilities, (and if you believe the author of the blog post, “the whole problem of “perverse” relationships and concepts that were formed during the Soviet era (there are no disabled, people with disabilities are contagious)”), businessmen, (and that includes me), don’t like to be compelled to do things, like who they have to employ.

There are some other practical problems … I have written elsewhere, for example, about the difficulty of the definition of “disability”.  Here, the law seems to define disability in the same “vague” terms that is used elsewhere which could be interpreted quite widely: “a person with health impairments and continuous body dysfunction caused by diseases, trauma, consequences or imperfection ad resulting in the restricted ability to perform daily living activities and making it necessary to ensure social protection.”   Apart from the last phrase, that could cover all sorts of things including bad backs and poor eyesight … That last phrase, “making it necessary to ensure social protection” would limit the measure to those who are actually officially classified as “disabled”, (there are three levels, degrees or categories), then that ought to remove any ambiguity … but why not actually state that explicitly?  As far as I can see it isn’t.

Then we come to the point about the quota – 5%.  Where did that come from?  Does it reflect the number of people available in the workforce that are classified as having a disability?  If not, then it is setting a target which is impossible to meet?, even if the employee is happy to do so.  I am told that the figure is taken from international experience, (the situation in Germany was mentioned), which obviously raises the question of whether it is appropriate for Kyrgyzstan.  Maybe it should be 10%, but maybe it should be 2%.  I am surprised that no-one seems able to provide what should be easily obtainable statistics that could answer this.

More to the point, however, I have a philosophical difficulty.  It seems to me that the government should be trying to positively encourage people to “do the right thing” rather than setting up a system which penalizes them for failing to meet targets.  It seems to me that penalties are best employed for “punishing” some positive act of “wrong doing” rather than “failing” to do something which is desirable.  I would prefer to see some “incentives” rather than “penalties”.  Such incentives do not have to be expensive for the government to implement, perhaps an allowance set against profit or corporation tax for each registered disabled person employed.  After all, that’s what they do for charitable donations … with a limit on how much can actually be claimed.

I am told, once again, that such an initiative worked in the past, although I am not aware of this, and that it was abused by some people/companies who claimed to be employing people with disabilities who weren’t actually working for them.  This doesn’t seem to me to be a good argument for dismissing the idea.  If someone is cheating the system like this, then they should indeed be penalized for doing so and it should be easy enough to require copies of the necessary documentation to be available for inspection if someone wanted to claim this allowance.

It seems to me that there are other problems: politicians all over the world, not to mention the international financial organizations like the World Bank and IMF, tend to dislike special earmarked funds.  Not only do they require special apparatus and management, they also limit the government’s “freedom” of action.

 

I am sure that the story will run for a long time.  Unfortunately, the exhibition will last for only a month … but, (although I doubt it),  I hope that the uproar over the night club incident was sufficient to ensure that we don’t hear the like of it again.

 

Tags: Business, Disabled, Expat, Life_in_Kyrgyzstan