Reykjavík Grapevine - 04.05.2018, Blaðsíða 4

What Are Iceland-
ers Talking About?
A round-up of fresh debates, hot topics
and crazy madness from the past month.
Words: Alice Demurtas
It 's been a tough month for
Icelandic midwives, but it's
luckily come to an end. After
having worked without a contract
for two months, the entire body of
independent midwives quit their
job on the same day, demand-
ing that more serious efforts be
taken to find an agreement. What
caused an uproar, however, was
the Minister for Health's unwill-
ingness to solve the situation
without implementing emer-
gency measures as a long-term
solution. In addition, although
the Minister herself assured she
had never heard anything from
the midwives, their contract had
apparently been lying on the
Minister's desk for months. The
midwives were shown support by
other workers such as the Police
force, as well as countless women
and men who posted on social
media pictures of their bellies
bearing the hashtag "I support
midwives."
It seems that transparency in
government is highly overrated
these days, and Minister of Social
Affairs and Equality Ásmundur
Einar Daðason proves just that.
MP Halldóra Mogensen suspects
that Ásmundur has been lying
all along about his knowledge
of the situation surrounding
former Child Protection Agency’s
director Bragi Guðbrandsson.
Although Bragi had been at the
centre of accusations of psycho-
logical abuse and sexual offences
in the workplace last year, he
was also nominated as Iceland's
representative for the United
Nations Committee on the Rights
of the Child. While Ásmundur
has denied lying, he did answer
the MP's inquiry by saying that
"neither the Child Protection
Agency nor its CEO have broken
any laws," which has caused an
uproar on social media especially
in connection with Bragi's nomi-
nation for the Committee.

On a happier note, Parliament
recently passed new laws to
protect the rights of disabled
people, specifically guarantee-
ing User-Led Personal Assistance
schemes (ULPA) as a main service
for those in need. After the govern-
ment had been slammed by The
Organisation of Disabled People
in Iceland because of unfair cuts to
various services, this is a personal
victory for all disabled people in
the country. ULPA, in fact, allows
individuals to choose where and
with whom they want to live, what
kind of services they need or want
to enjoy and how they are organ-
ised. "It's like being free versus
being in prison," Chairman of the
ULPA centre Rúnar Björn Herrera
Þorkelsson explains. "The kind of
services we had in place before
were limited to my house. But now
it follows my decisions person-
ally."
4The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 07 — 2018First
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