By Muntaha Al-Fadhli, KUNA,
Kuwait : A leading professor in public law Dr. Mohammad Abdulmehsen Al-Mugatae said Monday the Kuwaiti election law did not set specific regulations for citizens with special needs to help them vote with means that accommodate with their physical or mental disability.
He added, in remarks to KUNA, that the election law was “traditional and deficient,” where it did not determine a way for the voting process for such cases. It lacked guidelines and texts on using modern and appropriate methods whether by sings or writing, or by using the special writing and reading means used by blind and mute people and slow learners.
He added that the Kuwaiti election law had some amendments that were confined to helping the disabled to reach the electoral station and to be taken to the head of the electoral commission if he (she) could not reach with aid.
He added that the law did no add any other terms that would apply new techniques for helping cases of special needs in voting, a legal defect that required legislative intervention, by including an explicit condition that would allow these citizens to resort to all possible means in order to vote.
The number of people with special needs is increasing worldwide, where it hit in Kuwait more than 25,000, including people with different disabilities. The law number 89 for 1996 includes 23 provisions regulating the conditions of people with special needs.
The Director of the Executive Office of the Higher Council for the Disabled, Waleed Nasir Al-Oraifi, stated to Kuwait News Agency that the number of Kuwaitis with special needs scored more than 23,000, including 2,000 non-Kuwaitis, according to the statistics of the council for March.
He added that there are different kinds of disabilities, namely physical, sensory and mental disorders. There are 5,486 Kuwaitis with physical disability, and the ones with sensory problems hit 2,792, while the number of Kuwaitis with mind disability is 3,417, and 1,019 for mental illnesses.