How could Atos class such a sick man as fit for work?

Is ATOS fit for purpose ?
 
Most of us at one time or another would likely have heard or read about the welfare state being abused in one way or another,be it a millionaire with a large property portfolio with multiple housing benefit claims with multiple aliases or the disability living allowance claimant who receives thousands of pounds per year due to extremely poor mobility yet is then filmed playing football,well,you get the picture BUT on the other side of the coin are many individuals who have through no fault of their own,found themselves very sick or chronically disabled and I then firmly believe in the welfare state principles and as a civilised society,believe these individuals should be looked after medically and financially but this is not the case and the system is fundamentally flawed.
 
This is a snippet from an article recently which highlights this...

Let’s say you work for Atos in one of its Assessment Centres in Lancashire.
Your job is to assess people on disability ­benefits to see whether they are fit for work.
A 58-year-old man, who’s done 30 years hard graft, comes in for a “Work Capacity Assessment”.
He is suffering from diabetes with multiple complications and mental health problems.
He is almost blind, with incurable damage to both his eyes.
He suffers from frequent ­hypoglycaemic attacks that often result in total loss of consciousness and sometimes ­hospitalisation.
He is often incontinent. He suffers from depression.
He relies on friends, carers and family to shop for him and struggles to cross a road unaided.
He has no feeling in his feet – another complication of his diabetes.
He has suffered with gangrene and over the winter he had badly burned his feet on an electric heater.
On the day of his assessment, his feet are bandaged.
Say you had all that information in front of you. Would you write on your piece of paper “Fit for work”?
When Zulfiqar Shah, from Blackburn, was assessed by Atos, his assessor gave him zero points. He needed 13 to qualify for benefits.
His family says the decision almost killed him – a diabetic who could no longer afford to eat.
“I told them I wasn’t afraid to work, but that at the moment I was not well enough to,” Zulfiqar says, quietly. “But they didn’t listen.”
When his sister Zahida, 46, picked Zulfiqar up from the assessment centre he was wearing only one shoe, not even realising he was walking with his ­bandaged, burned foot on the pavement.
“Any human being seeing him for five minutes could see that my brother was neither physically or mentally able to work,” Zahida says.

I would suggest that a radical change in the current system needs to happen and SOON.

Paul

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