Gwangju Nam-gu Discovers 1,578 Disabled Individuals Unaware of Various Support Benefits

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Seon-gang] Nam-gu, Gwangju Metropolitan City (District Mayor Kim Byeong-nae) announced on the 12th that it conducted a survey to identify beneficiaries eligible for disability welfare service rights protection targeting 11,311 registered disabled persons in the district, and discovered 1,578 registered disabled persons who meet the qualification requirements to receive various services and financial support benefits.

Nam-gu conducted the survey to identify beneficiaries eligible for disability welfare service rights protection from June 29 to the 21st of last month.

The survey targeted 15 service areas including low-income disabled persons’ medical certificate issuance and examination fee support, re-assessment candidates for disability, cochlear implant surgery support for hearing-impaired persons, expiration of highway toll discount card validity, eligibility for disability pension and allowance application, medical expenses for disabled persons, and daytime activity services for persons with developmental disabilities.

As a result of the survey, it was found that 1,578 persons had missed various services, with a total amount of service support funds estimated at approximately 33.56 million KRW.

The main reasons for not receiving support were lack of awareness about the expanded eligibility due to system changes, or failure to recognize the impending expiration of discount benefits.

First, regarding medical certificate issuance and examination fee support for low-income disabled persons, until last year, overlapping support between the two items was not allowed. However, the government relaxed the eligibility and support criteria starting this year, changing guidelines so that recipients who applied for re-assessment and disabled persons in the near-poverty bracket can receive support for both medical certificate issuance fees and examination fees.

Nam-gu identified 37 eligible recipients through this survey, who can receive up to 140,000 KRW per person in support funds.

Another case involves the expiration of the highway toll discount card validity.

The disability welfare card includes a highway toll discount function, and the card is issued accordingly. Since the card reissuance requires time before the expiration date, and early reissuance is necessary to avoid disadvantages, this is an important issue.

In this survey, 384 persons whose card validity was about to expire were able to continue receiving highway toll discount benefits through pre-application before expiration.

A Nam-gu official stated, “We will actively guide related systems and services so that disabled persons in the district can exercise their rights and use various services, and we will continue to devote more interest and effort to finding disability rights protection in the future.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.