President promises higher disability benefits amid protest

Duda on Friday met protesters, mainly parents who care for their adult disabled children, who have been occupying a hallway in Warsaw's parliament building since Wednesday.

The protesters want disability payouts raised to equal the minimum monthly unemployment benefit in Poland, which stands at around PLN 1,000 (EUR 240), and for an extra handout of PLN 500 per month for disabled adults who cannot care for themselves.

"Is PLN 900 – PLN 150 in rehabilitation benefits and a PLN 744 disability pension – enough for a dignified life?" said Iwona Hartwich, the mother of a 21-year-old with a disability.

Duda promised that new legislation would be drafted to meet the protesters' demands.

He also told the protesters that they could go home and be certain that "I will deal with your issue."

But the protesters, who declined the president's invitation to speak to him in his office as well as a separate invitation for a meeting with the social policy minister, insisted that they would remain in the parliament building until they meet either Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki or the leader of the ruling Law and Justice party, Jarosław Kaczyński.

Four years in the making

The protest was described by some media as a continuation of a 17-day-long demonstration in parliament in 2014, when about 30 people, mainly parents who cared for their disabled adult children, demanded higher disability payouts. Those protests ended with the valorization of benefits.

In 2014, Law and Justice party MP Elżbieta Rafalska, then a member of the opposition and today minister for social policy, supported the protest and promised to help families of people with disabilities, Hartwich said on Thursday.

Hartwich added that Law and Justice has not fulfilled those promises since coming to power in 2015 and said that there was no mention of changes to disability policy during the party’s conference last weekend. (vb/pk)

Source: PAP, IAR