The National Ombudsman institution has consistently called for incentives for employers who hire more people with disabilities, Ombudsman Velislava Delcheva said at a conference in Sofia on Wednesday.
The conference, entitled “20 Years Later: From Rights on Paper to Independent Living,” was organized by Maria’s World Foundation to mark the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Among the measures proposed by the Ombudsman are additional tax incentives for employers, workplace adaptations and greater opportunities for people with disabilities to pursue professional careers, Delcheva said.
“The complaints received by the Ombudsman institution show me how great the distance is between a right written into law and a person’s actual ability to exercise it,” she said.
As an example, Delcheva cited the case of a wheelchair user in Lovech who was unable to access an Ombudsman reception because of inadequate infrastructure. She said she had contacted the Mayor, who had promised changes, and that she would check in three months whether they had been implemented.
Delcheva also called for personal assistance to fulfil its purpose of supporting independent living rather than creating a need for additional financial support for people with disabilities or their families. Digitalization, she added, should make services easier to access rather than create new barriers.
The Ombudsman also called for reform of Bulgaria’s guardianship system. Delcheva said the existing model, under which a person can effectively be deprived of the ability to make decisions about their own life, should be replaced with mechanisms for supported decision-making. She said she had raised the issue with Parliament in May.
Delcheva further called for reform of psychiatric care, arguing that changes should go beyond renovating buildings and improving conditions in healthcare facilities. She said community-based services, protection of patients’ rights and genuine opportunities for people to live outside institutions were also needed.
For Delcheva, this reflected the purpose of the UN disability rights convention: not to establish a separate set of rights for a particular group, but to ensure that people with disabilities can exercise the same rights as everyone else.
Addressing the conference, Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Policy Nadya Klisurska said that Bulgaria currently has a network of over 1,900 social services that support more than 56,000 people in need. “In recent years, under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, we have managed to establish more than 205 new social services,” Klisurska added. Seventy-six nursing homes have been renovated.
It is important that support be tailored to each person’s individual needs, the Deputy Minister underscored. According to her, since 2019, Bulgarian legislation in the social sector has placed an emphasis on individual needs, but there is still a need to assess these types of needs.
Ombudsman Calls for Incentives for Employers Hiring More People with Disabilities 2026 THE NEWS FROM BULGARIA – NEWS AGENCY 2009-2025 2026-10-07 09:28:00
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