Finland: Kalle Könkkölä, Disabled Activist

In Finland, political activist Kalle Könkkölä is a role model for people with disabilities, and sets an example for the rest of the world.

"What is the price of human rights?"

How are legislation and the everyday life of disabled people connected and what effect do they have on each other? This is a difficult issue of social interaction, not without shades of the chicken-and-egg conundrum. Könkkölä does admit that there have been a lot of changes for the better. At least in Finland, the world is a better place for people with disabilities than it was twenty years ago. "But it is still legal to build houses with no disabled access whatsoever. The excuse is that it's cheaper that way. Which brings me to the question: what is the price of human rights?" Apart from housing, public transport has always been essential for disabled people and it is also a gauge of equality. Low-floor buses and trams have become more common, and Könkkölä admits that VR, the Finnish State Railways, have improved their services, but: "Take for example the competitive tendering for public transport in the Helsinki metropolitan area. Access is a criterion, admittedly, but it is merely a 'quality factor' not a unconditional demand." Könkkölä feels that VR provides reasonably good services for people with disabilities, with frequent trains between Helsinki, Tampere and Turku, but getting to slightly more out-of the- way places such as Pori and Kuopio is already much more complicated.

"I know of a very recent case where a passenger in a wheelchair was not allowed on board, because there was no lifting equipment," Könkkölä says.

Better alternative
In Könkkölä's opinion, it is essential for human rights that disabled people can cope with their everyday life with as few complications as possible. It follows that it is a crucial equality issue to demand disabled access to public transport. "I myself use buses quite a lot. The attitudes of bus drivers vary a lot. Some are incredibly friendly, while some won't get off their seat for anything. By the way, I can understand perfectly well that wheelchair ramps are sometimes broken, but what I don't understand is why they don't get repaired." Something else which would make everyday life a lot easier would be personal assistants. A disabled person's chances of getting a personal assistant depend on where in Finland he or she lives; in one third of Finland's municipalities it is not possible to have an assistant at all. These municipalities prefer to provide services for their disabled residents through home-help services and other systems. Könkkölä considers this strange, in view of the fact that personal assistants are a great deal more effective and also cheaper, in his opinion . "It only costs about half of what home-help services cost. Even more costs could then be saved because a disabled person with an assistant can use public transport, reducing the need for other forms of transportation. The help people would get would also be much more individual. And, last but not least, hiring assistants would also create jobs, so on the whole it is impossible to understand the authorities' reluctance to use it," Könkkölä says, claiming that the entire problem could be eliminated if society would spend a total of 50 million euros over a four year- period on developing the system of personal assistants. "It wouldn't ruin the country's economy. And it would make a huge difference to every disabled person's quality of life."

First job hardest to find
The Government Programme of the new Government is the first to promise that a report on disability policy will be submitted to Parliament during the Government's term of office. "We have tried for a long time to get that included in the Government Programme, but now at last it is there. So I'm giving this Government the benefit of the doubt before I start to make a fuss. The previous Government deserves a telling off for promising to take care of disabled issues but failing to deliver." Working life is a world of its own, where people with disabilities have to overcome great prejudice; it is still very difficult for disabled people to gain entry to working life despite equality legislation and government programmes. Könkkölä says that people with disabilities have no problems in working life if they are exceptionally skilled in their profession and there is high labour demand in that specific field. Work experience is also n ecessary to demonstrate that skill. This means that finding one's first job is the biggest challenge. "I've suggested a system where people with disabilities would be guaranteed a first job by society. But the ministries have not shown much interest in that proposal," Könkkölä says.

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