According to United Nations, around 10 per cent of the population live with a disability. In other words, there are roughly 3 million people with disabilities in our nation.
With that, the Government had in 2008 decided that the civil service must allocate one percent of jobs to people with disabilities. With the one per cent quota policy, we expect 14,000 jobs to be provided to the disabled people amongst the 1.4 million civil servants.
After 5 years of implementation, it is disappointing that the government has yet to achieve its aim of having at least one per cent of the government workforce being the disabled.
In the year 2008, there were 581 disabled people working in the public sector. The number increased to 1,686 in 2011 and was slightly improved to 1,754 in 2013.
At this pace, given another 20 years we also will not achieve the target of having one per cent of officers in government agencies being people with disabilities.
The Government’s failure to implement the 1% quota policy has definitely demotivated those with disabilities to work in the public sectors, moreover in private sectors. More fundamentally, there is work to be done by the Government to provide sufficient training to the disabled people and protect their great interest, as to ensure their abilities to earn a living, in both public and private sectors.
As a matter of fact, the 1% quota is relatively low compare to United States (3%) and United Kingdom (3%). Take for examples, United Kingdom had in 1944 legislated the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act 1944 – employers who employ more than 20 employees must have 3% of disabled persons. The same goes to Brazil in which employers who employ less than 200 employees to have 2% of disabled people and companies more than 1,000 people need to reach even 5%.
Hence, the Government must play its role and fulfill its social obligation to implement the 1% quota policy so that the disabled persons can overcome the prejudice and discrimination and be fully employed on their own merits to compete with non-disabled workers.
In the absence of such implementation, unequal access to employment opportunities will remain a reality for them. Also, more accessibility to be created in workplace to improve the convenience for disabled people to improve their willingness to work and fairly represented in their workforce.