Friday, July 06, 2012

Amsterdam Council is callous and arbitrary to the handicapped.

Yesterday I sent an e-mail to Hans de Graaf from Mozaak, the investigator for Amsterdam Council.

In the e-mail I asked for an explanation why I had heard that he apparently sent me another e-mail on 12th of June asking further questions, which I never received.

Apparently on 19th of June having not heard anything from me and not being bothered to telephone me or send me an e-mail.

He decided to give a negative advice and close the case, which was then sent to the council’s legal department.

I received a brief response from him today with no explanation whatsoever just telling me he had completed his investigation.

So much for his so-called sympathetic understanding of my position as an MS sufferer.

Which he mentioned in his e-mail of 12th of June, he even said it was not his intention to give a negative decision, but he had to make an inventory of all the information.

Today he told me that in due course I would receive a letter informing me of the Councils decision, and that was all the explanation he gave me.

Amazing given that he had told my friend more when she telephoned him, that he'd sent additional questions in an e-mail on 12th of June which I had not replied to, so the investigation was closed by him on 19th of June.

He also told my friend that there had been unanswered questions about our apartment, he wondered whether there was something structurally wrong with the apartment.

Apparently this is the responsibility of our landlord; I am really amazed that this is an issue, as I had answered a question about this, saying that the only problem was my having multiple sclerosis and not the apartment.

However seeing as I am communicating with bureaucrats, I shouldn't be surprised at their callous and arbitrary manner of dealing with vulnerable people such as myself.

I really wish I could expose this, but it really is difficult to get support here in the Netherlands, it is not encouraged.

When I was trapped for one year while I waited for a new apartment on the second floor of our old apartment.

 Because I could not walk the stairs I tried to get newspapers interested in my situation so that they would write about it but nobody was interested.

It was quite a shock for me to discover this, the only time there was some interest was when I could not use a newly built swimming pool which supposedly was accessible for handicapped people, but wasn't.

Then the local paper printed a small piece about it and I was in a radio programme by telephone, 5 minutes of publicity which never resulted in any action.

The only good thing to come of it all was that I started my blog in August 2006 because I needed somewhere to express how I felt about having multiple sclerosis.









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