Film and theater actor Musulmonbek Yunusov has issued a video appeal on Instagram to Shahnoza Mirziyoyeva, first deputy director of the National Agency for Social Protection, describing a series of problems he says his family faced while trying to secure disability status for his young daughter.
According to Yunusov, his mother has a Group I disability, and his daughter also lives with a disability. She was first granted disability status two years ago, but the family recently had to resubmit documentation to renew it.
"My wife and I have been standing in line like everyone else since late May, going through all the required medical examinations and gathering the necessary paperwork," he said. "We eventually submitted our documents to the medical and labor expert commission in the Sergeli district. They told us they would contact us within two or three days."
Yunusov said that two days later, a nurse from Polyclinic No. 71 called his wife. Before speaking, the nurse allegedly asked whether anyone was nearby and whether the call was being recorded.
"After my wife said no one was around, the nurse told her, 'We'll grant your daughter disability status until she turns 18, and we'll register you as her caregiver too — but there's a service fee of $300,'" Yunusov recounted.
He said he objected to the request and called the polyclinic to complain, after which staff stopped answering his calls. Two days later, the family received an official response stating that the daughter had been granted disability status, but that her mother had not been registered as her caregiver.
"Does that mean my daughter can eat, walk and use the bathroom on her own? If she could actually do all that, we wouldn't need a disability determination in the first place," Yunusov said. "What really stings is knowing that if we had paid the $300, her mother would have been registered as caregiver too."
He said he also visited the social protection center in Sergeli district and raised the issue with staff there, but that this, too, failed to resolve the matter.
"I spoke with lawyers. I ran from one office to another, but no one could actually solve anything," he said. "That's when it hit me — birds of a feather protect each other. When I asked what I should do next, I was told: if you want, go ahead and post a video appeal."
In his video message, Yunusov asked Shahnoza Mirziyoyeva to personally look into the case. He also called for an investigation into staff members allegedly demanding illegal payments from families of children with disabilities, and for their dismissal from their positions.
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