Zionist Union attempts to solve disability allowance problem
Opposition parties led by Zionist Union chairman Avi Gabbay, the Histadrut labor federation and eight members of the groups representing people with disabilities met in the Knesset for the first time on Monday to discuss implementing an approved NIS 4.2 billion increase in disability benefits.
The increase is scheduled to go into effect January 1, 2018, but an agreement signed in late September between Histadrut chairman Avi Nissenkorn, coalition chairman David Bitan, MK Ilan Gilon (Meretz) and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon has lost momentum because no follow up had taken place until Monday.
Last week, Gilon made an official inquiry in which he called out Labor, Welfare and Health Committee chairman Eli Alalouf (Kulanu): “As of today, October 31, 2017, no memorandum of law has even been published. We only have about two months to complete the legislative process as agreed upon with the Israeli government. I am afraid that when the government finally wakes up it will be too late.”
Following the inquiry, the Gabbay-led group drew up a bill that further detailed the financial needs of Israel’s 230,000 disabled citizens.
Their proposed bill includes increasing allowances for disabled children to NIS 150 million; providing an additional NIS 75m. to encourage employment of the disabled; and an increase of NIS 300m. for the elderly with disabilities.
All would be implemented annually over the course of four years and would be in addition to the previously approved NIS 4.2b. agreement.
Gabby said at the Monday meeting it was time for the government to begin promoting laws that are based on mutual responsibility and that advance society and support the weak.
“If the government does not promote the law it undertook to solve the monthly allowance crisis for the disabled, we will take it upon ourselves, today, to advance the bill that includes the government’s commitment to increase the allowance going toward the disabled,” Gabbay said at Monday’s meeting.
Despite the efforts to increase the monthly allowances, 36 groups representing people with disabilities, up from 21 last week, are entering their third week in the “Protest Tent” outside the Knesset and are urging that the proposed bill be rejected.
“We have not yet achieved our goal of a monthly minimum wage, so we are continuing our struggle. We will not stop until all the disabled people receive the national minimum wage,” a spokesman for the group Disabled Becoming Panthers told The Jerusalem Post.