People with Disabilities Protest the Seventh Development Plan; '20% of Beneficiaries Will Be Eliminated Annually'

According to an advocate for 'disability rights', the Seventh Development Plan has been drafted with an approach of 'removing beneficiaries from the support cycle', and based on this plan, 20% of beneficiaries will be removed from the support cycle annually. Behrouz Marouti, the director of the Disabled Campaign, described this action as a 'great injustice by the government' within the Seventh Development Plan and emphasized that after 45 years of the existence of welfare services, no infrastructure has been established in this area. The website Khabar Online also reported on a gathering of a group of disabled individuals in front of the Parliament on Sunday, June 7, considering it a protest by the disabled community against the recent actions of the government. Behrouz Marouti believes that Article 16 of the Seventh Development Plan, which allows employers to pay disabled workers below the approved minimum wage, constitutes 'legalizing lawlessness against disabled workers'. Khabar Online reported that two members of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, present at the gathering, promised to play a role in amending the provisions of the plan after its submission to the Parliament and to prevent the removal of government support for the disabled. Among the criticisms of the Seventh Development Plan is that Article 16 allows employers to pay 'individuals with special conditions who are under the coverage of the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation and welfare services less than the approved minimum wage for the year'. Individuals introduced by the prison organization will also be included in this matter. If this bill is approved, the minimum wage emphasized by labor law will be overlooked. Previously, the Free Union of Iranian Workers criticized the Seventh Development Plan bill, calling it 'severely anti-labor', 'an all-out attack on the lives of the weakest and most vulnerable workers', and 'an assault on the lives and livelihoods of workers and other wage earners in society'. On Tuesday, June 8, Ali Bahadori Jahromi, the spokesperson for the Islamic Republic government, announced that the five-year Seventh Development Plan was approved in an extraordinary meeting of the government cabinet. According to this government official, this bill was approved after holding 45 specialized commission meetings and 7 cabinet meetings. This bill will soon be presented to the Parliament to be included in its agenda. The Seventh Development Plan was prepared two years after the end of the Sixth Development Plan's five-year law. The Sixth Development Plan was the five-year economic, social, and cultural development plan of the Islamic Republic of Iran from 2017 to 2021. This plan aimed to achieve an average annual economic growth of 9% and a Gini coefficient of 29% in the final year of the plan, goals that were not achieved by the end of its implementation. Gatherings of disabled individuals in front of the Organization of Planning and Budget: 'No charity, no favors, give us our rights with dignity'. Prevention of a gathering of disabled individuals in Qaem Park in Tehran under the pretext of not obtaining a permit. Protests by some individuals with disabilities in several cities in Iran. When the 'Law on the Support of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities' gathers dust; 655,000 tomans for 'living'.