Why Shafiqa Al-Awadi?
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Kuwait is considered the most distinguished in the world at the level of financial support provided to a person with a disability. The unreasonable generosity of support has led many, among them pious to cheat, involve in transgression and forgery in order to feign as one of them or their children as disabled person to obtain all or some of the privileges.
People with severe disabilities, who represent almost 50,000, deserve the following benefits and less for other disabilities:
A priority in residential care; full paid leave for the disabled pregnant person; fewer working hours for the disabled and those entrusted to care for them and early retirement for the caregiver; a wheelchair, earphone, or vision device, as needed; a disabled person and his companion are entitled to paid leave, if he/she is sick; the father of a disabled person is entitled to a disability allowance which is added to his salary; a housing grant of 10,000 ; a monthly salary of 300 dinars for the person assigned to take care of a disabled person; a monthly salary of 150 dinars for a disabled driver and a monthly salary of 594 dinars for a disabled person.
The Public Authority for Disabled Affairs (PADA) also has other broad powers, including issuing school licenses and other things that drool over manipulators, and some deputies rush to obtain them for themselves or their voters, even if force has to be used, and the incident of a quarrel with that parliamentarian — who is in a hurry to get rich — with the director of the authority, Dr. Shafiqa Al-Awadi is still fresh in the memory.
Because of all these issues and others, almost all ministers who took over PADA sought to change something about it, or to dismiss those who manage it.
PADA is concerned about the conditions of more than 50,000 disabled people and because of the extraordinary generosity it pays in terms of benefits, salaries and free materials prompted a large number of people to tamper with their requests, especially in the early years of the establishment of the authority with the help of well-known doctors falsely acquired incorrect disability certificates, causing loss of millions of dinars and thousands of cases were filed against those who unlawfully received the benefits.
Privileges and salaries were also a strong motivation for some to pay large sums to obtain Kuwaiti citizenship, and they are confident that what will be paid will be recovered within a few years from the PADA, let alone money and grants provided by other institutions.
Fighting these claimants and others has created countless enemies for the Authority especially after their files were transferred to the Prosecution. However some of them were acquitted because the charges fell within the unethical, but practically non-criminal, ways to obtain the money.
The same applies to prolonging the work of government committees to obtain allowances or going on unnecessary official missions, or what is similar to adverts in the social media for bad products and services in exchange for money.
In the same context, a report issued some time ago showed that there was a significant increase in the rate of the disabled persons in the Jahra and Ahmadi governorates, compared to the rest of the governorates and the difference was double the number of people with disabilities.
Despite the seriousness of the phenomenon, no party paid much attention to the issue other than noting that the residents of Al-Jahra Governorate are the poorest as a sole justification for the presence of a higher percentage of people with disabilities there than other areas.
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By Ahmad alsarraf
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