Kenny Nicol
DISMAYED Kenny Nicol has told how he was passed fit to work – despite suffering osteoarthritis and enduring seven operations.
He scored zero on his new Department for Work and Pensions test, carried out by Atos.
The former oil worker, of Buckie, Aberdeenshire, can’t walk further than 100 yards without his joints swelling and suffers constant pain in his shoulders, hips, knees and hands.
It means he is unable to lift anything heavy or even write.
Kenny, 52, said:
“I have sore knees, flat feet, arthritis in my joints, affecting my elbows, shoulders and hands. I have bone peeling off and sticking into my shoulders, yet I’m allegedly fit to work. It’s nuts.”
We told yesterday how 50,000 disabled Scots were being forced back to work by benefits bullies at the DWP.
Figures showed that 70 per cent of people put through the DWP tests by French firm Atos were passed as being fit or potentially fit to get jobs despite their illnesses.
It has now emerged that of the remaining 30 per cent found to be genuinely disabled and deserving of their benefits, thousands are sent for repeat assessments in less than a year.
Kenny’s benefits were reinstated on appeal. But he said:
“There is no way people should go through what I had to, for nothing.”
A DWP spokesman said: “It’s unfair that in the past, people were abandoned to a lifetime on benefits, without any checks to see if they could, with the right support, go back to work.”
The Scottish Daily Record
