Rustem Gafarov: “Our main task is to create all conditions in Kazan for the full life of the disabled”

The meeting of the Council for the Disabled was held in the Executive Committee of the city.

(KZN.RU, April 17, Ksenia Shvetsova). The development of adaptive sports, the disclosure of the creative abilities of people with disabilities and the employment of people with disabilities were discussed today at the meeting of the Council for the Disabled. The event took place in the Kazan Executive Committee.

Rustem Gafarov, the first deputy head of the Executive Committee, held the meeting attended by Adel Mubarakshin, the deputy minister of Labor, Employment and Social Protection of the RT, Nadezhda Bakina, the head of the Department for Social Rehabilitation of the Tatar Republican Organization “All-Russian Society of Disabled People”, heads of structural divisions of the Executive Committee, heads of non-profit organizations and cultural institutions of the city, the museum community, cultural institutions, children's art schools and libraries took part in it.

Opening the meeting, Rustem Gafarov reminded that 87622 people with disabilities live in Kazan, of which 4667 are children. “Our main task is to create all conditions in Kazan for the full life of disabled people. We regularly review issues and try to do everything in order to provide an accessible environment for people with disabilities in the city”, marked the first deputy head of the Executive Committee.

Lenar Garifullin, the acting chairman of the Committee of Physical Culture and Sport, spoke about the work that is being done in Kazan in terms of the development of adaptive sports. He said that today a municipal program for the development of adaptive physical culture and adaptive sports in Kazan for 2020-2022 is being formed in the capital of Tatarstan, together with the Volga Academy of Physical Culture and Sports.

Larisa Parfenova, the head of the Department of Adaptive Physical Culture of the Volga Region Academy of Physical Culture and Sport, told in more detail about the formation of the program. According to her, at the moment adaptive physical culture is developing in 55 organizations of the city. “Given today's realities, this figure does not reflect existing needs”, noted L. Parfenova. She marked that, by law, all educational institutions in the city must fully comply with the requirements for teaching children with disabilities.

“The structure of the future program has already been defined, its passport has been developed. It will contain strategic approaches to the further development of adaptive sports in Kazan”, said the speaker.

Today, municipal institutions of culture actively create conditions for the disclosure of the creative abilities of people with disabilities, attracting them to actively participate in cultural life, both as consumers and producers of cultural products. Azat Abzalov, the head of the Department of Culture, said that currently 35 out of the 106 objects of municipal cultural institutions are fully adapted to the standards of the Accessible Environment program. There are 64 people with disabilities in cultural institutions.

Ramps, tactile plates, staff call buttons were installed in the cultural institutions for the unhindered access of persons with disabilities to the cultural institutions. The works on the improvement of sanitary facilities in buildings were performed. “We will repair 10 more institutions, which are now partially adapted for disabled people”, said A. Abzalov. “This is about the HoC Said-Galiev, the cultural center in Zalesny, the Chulpan Cultural Center, children's music schools, libraries”. A. Abzalov added that after the completion of the already started capital repairs of city facilities, 50% of cultural institutions will be fully adapted for people with disabilities.

Annually, within the framework of the Decade of Disabled Persons, cultural institutions conduct more than 80 events covering more than 6.5 thousand people. Additional education institutions cover 8.5 thousand children.

In the institutions of additional education, individual programs for students are applied, each child has his own approach. In order to develop this area, the leaders of art schools learn from the experience of specialized institutions in Moscow. “There are specialized educational institutions in Moscow and in a number of other cities where such programs are developed and this problem is solved there systematically”. A. Abzalov noted that in order to solve the problem in Kazan, it is necessary to create a resource center on the basis of a school or a university for training teachers. “For this, we need to work with the Ministry of Culture, both in RT and in the federal center”, he said.

“Let's move in that direction. If there are demands of society, then we need to develop. We have a huge potential, there are a lot of secondary vocational schools, universities. We have everything for studying at home”, said R. Gafarov.

Work with children with disabilities is conducted on the basis of many educational institutions of the city. Large festivals are regularly held in Kazan at which children with disabilities can realize their skills.

Another issue that was discussed by the council members was the employment of citizens with disabilities. According to Marat Khairullin, the director of the Kazan Center for Employment, the number of people with disabilities in Kazan is quite significant, and the problem of employment remains acute. In 2018, the number of people with disabilities who applied to the center for job search amounted to more than a thousand people. In the first quarter of 2019, 261 people of this category applied, 34% of them are already employed. To date, 358 citizens with disabilities, including 10 people from the first group, 126 people from the second group, and 222 people from the third group, are registered with the Center for Employment of Kazan.

“Tatarstan, for the first time in 18 constituent entities of the Russian Federation, became the pilot for comprehensive rehabilitation of disabled people, including children”, said Adel Mubarakshin, the deputy minister of Labor, Employment and Social Protection of the RT. “This project provides for the purchase of rehabilitation equipment, inter-agency cooperation, the allocation of funds for training and retraining of specialists who are engaged in training and rehabilitation of children and the disabled. We will consider your question separately”.

At the end of the meeting, R. Gafarov urged all participants to actively share their thoughts and bring them up for discussion at subsequent meetings. “I ask you to remember that daily work, individual approach and, of course, all your professionalism are important”, he concluded.

Photo report

The meeting of the Council for the Disabled People was held in the Executive Committee