ANTI-MAXIMUS PROTESTS MARCH 2ND

DPAC

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1 March 2015

Protests will be held Britain-wide on March 2nd to denounce US based company Maximus and its takeover of the Work Capability Assessment, previously run by the French IT company ATOS.   In Edinburgh demonstrators are set to descend on the Maximus Assessment Centre in Argyle House on Lady Lawson Street from 1pm onwards on Monday.

The day of action has been called by Disabled People Against The Cuts (DPAC), disability rights organisation Black Triangle,  Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty (ECAP), the Industrial Workers of the World and other groups, who are all demanding the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) be scrapped.  The WCA is the current test which determines if claimants are awarded the disability benefit  Employment and Support Allowance.

Previous administration of the Work Capability Assessment by ATOS proved controversial. ATOS was frequently accused of incompetence with assessors having no accredited medical training and the process by which they assess claimants repeatedly being described as “unfair” and “cruel”. Very often these tests amount to little more than a box ticking exercise for the assessor with little consideration taken of the complexity of the claimants often multi-faceted medical history.

DYING – BUT “FIT FOR WORK”

Numerous reports detail the inhumanity of the system. Claimants have been phoned up the day after their heart bypass to be told they are fit for work.   Claimants dying of cancer have even been declared fit for work by a computerised test which assigns points based on what claimants can’t do and has been known to deny points based on whether the claimant arrived at the assessment centre unaided or something as simple as whether they were able to remove their coat without assistance.