The documents were used to fulfill the 4% hiring of people with disabilities
JOURNALISTS
New revelations appear about the use of disability cards, obtained illegally, through hospital centers of the Ministry of Health.
Bank employees, who for security reasons ask for the reservation of their names and the entities in which they work, report that their employers bought the documents in Guayaquil, since 2013.
According to their testimonies, the Human Talent departments of the financial entities coordinated directly with officials from the health centers of the main port.
Employees from branches in different cities were chosen, preferably those who wore glasses, to put them on a list. Subsequently, they indicated the date on which they should travel to Guayaquil and the health center to which they should go, at a previously agreed time.
For fear of losing their job, employees complied with the provision and followed the instructions to obtain the document, which would have cost up to USD 1,500.
Although the chosen people did not suffer from any disability, the objective was to use the cards to justify, in the Ministry of Labor, compliance with the mandatory percentage of hiring people with disabilities.
Article 42, numeral 33, of the Labor Code, establishes that public or private employers must compulsorily hire 4% of people with some type of disability, of the total payroll.
Failure to comply with this legal provision is sanctioned with a monthly fine equivalent to ten unified basic remunerations.
The last record on sanctioned companies was in May 2010, when the Ministry of Labor fined Banco Pichincha, Cervecería Nacional, Holcim, Andes Petroleum, Equivida, Carvajal Offsetec, Aseguradora del Sur, Agipgas and Álvarez Barba for a total of USD 640,000. .
Assemblyman Juan Cristóbal Lloret, from the Collective Rights Commission, asked the ministries of Health and Labor to list employees of financial entities that have a disability card, to start an investigation.
Lloret described this act committed by banking institutions as shameful and pointed out that this shows the distribution and the lack of control by the government of President Lenin Moreno.
The disability expert, Stalin Basantes, highlighted that people who do suffer from some type of disability and who, due to their condition, have greater economic needs are being displaced from work.
He believes that there is a violation of his rights, so he believes that it is appropriate to review the cards issued by the Ministry of Health.
In the public sector, he recalled that people with disabilities receive an additional score in merit contests to fill a vacancy, so the illegal use of those documents would be serious.
According to the Minister of Health, Juan Carlos Zavallos, during the Covid-19 pandemic alone, 3,000 disability cards were issued illegally.
For the legal expert, Guillermo Trávez, the fraudulent obtaining of disability cards constitutes a crime of illicit association, between officials of the Ministry of Health and the companies or entities that request the document.
«There is an association to commit crimes and to defraud and deceive,» says Trávez, for which he believes that it is necessary for the Prosecutor to carry out the necessary investigations to find those responsible.
We requested a statement from the Association of Private Banks of Ecuador (ASOBANCA), but, until the closing of this report, we did not receive a response.
According to the Ministry of Labor, 49,120 people are currently registered as workers, with some type of disability, in the private sector and 19,963 in public entities.
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