“For more than 40 years, the Pancyprian Organization of the Blind, founded in 1980, has been waging an unequal struggle for socio-economic empowerment, educational and professional integration and for ensuring the exercise of the fundamental and inalienable rights of the blind of Cyprus,” President of the Organization said Christakis Nicolaides said from the podium of the 42nd Annual General Assembly on Saturday 8 July 2023 at the School for the Blind in Nicosia.
Without mincing his words Nicolaides spoke bluntly about “the failure of our country to support blind and partially sighted people.”
He said that the situation regarding respect for the rights of persons with disabilities “has been gradually but steadily deteriorating for almost 15 years”, adding that “all our efforts to halt this slide have not yielded the desired results to date. During the last years – he added – the chronic inefficiencies and distortions of the deficient social welfare system in Cyprus have been revealed to their full extent, accompanied by significant reductions of millions from one year to the next, in terms of addressing the cost of protecting the rights of citizens with disabilities”.
The references of Mr. Nicolaides, who is also president of the Cyprus Confederation of Disabled People’s Organizations, are of particular importance since they were made in the presence of Deputy Minister of Social Welfare Marilena Evangellou, who conveyed the greetings of the President of the Republic to the assembly.
