Ministry official: “We will let them apply again, because it is their right”
Ulvi Huseynov, deputy director of the Disability Policy Department of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection, announced that a Working Group has been established in the Ministry to review disability statuses of veterans who received a previous refusal on it.
According to him, those whose diagnoses justify a disability status will now have their cases reviewed unilaterally by specialists working for the Ministry.
“We recommend citizens who have applied for disability status for general reasons and received a refusal to try again, since the new criteria is more favorable. This is their right,” the deputy director said, adding that the main part of the revision process will be completed by the end of this month.
In Azerbaijan, it is necessary for a person to have a disability status in order to receive pensions and benefits related to any impairment.
This is a sensible topic especially regarding veterans. In the first week of June, a group of participants of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War held a protest in front of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection. They complained about the the refusal of the public authorities to give disability certificates without further examination. In most cases, the veterans received a negative answer even without a physical exam. Moreover, it is not rare to hear stories of suicide among veterans who cannot get their pensions and compensations right. This was the fate of Mashalla Manafov, who took his life on June 16 because he was accumulating debts and had not received his disability status and pension from the government.
