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Over 7 million disabled face joblessness

With the downsizing of the public sector units, or PSUs, and the burgeoning corporates doing little to offer them succour, the prospects of over 7 million 'able' disabled getting employment seem bleak.

Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Maneka Gandhi had recently proposed a quota for the disabled in the private sector. The idea has, however, not quite caught on, and key members of the corporate world are opposed to it.

Deputy Director General of the Confederation of Indian Industry, or CII, S Sen said, "Job reservation for the disabled can never work. Social problems cannot be resolved through force."

Well-known disability activist Javed Abidi takes a neutral stand saying, "Though we are not proposing a quota system, a debate should start in right earnest as to what should be the possible solution to this vexing problem."

Society should stop viewing the over 6 million disabled people as just recipients of welfare and charity, and instead form the concept of productivity and self-reliance, he opines.

Abidi adds that the government itself has faltered in implementing the reservation quota for such people in the public sector as enshrined in the 1995 Disability Act.

In 1977, the central government reserved 3 per cent of vacancies in identified jobs in the public sector, but only in the 'C' and 'D' categories which form the lowest rung. About 100,000 people benefited from this. Thought the government, in 1995, expanded the scope of this 3 per cent to include the higher categories, it has till date, not been able to identify suitable jobs for the disabled.

"The harsh reality is that with the divestment in the public sector, job opportunities in the government are actually shrinking. The situation will get worse in the years to come," Abidi says.

"The question now is, is the Indian corporate sector doing anything to address the issue?" he asks.

According to a survey of the top 100 corporate houses conducted in 1999 by the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People, or NCPEPD, the average percentage of employees with disabilities is a dismal 0.4 per cent in the public sector, 0.54 per cent in the private sector and 0.05 per cent in multinationals.

"Even one year after the survey report, the corporate world has not woken up to the problem, leading to a situation where one needs to debate if the government should force them to reserve a minimum number of jobs for the disabled," Abidi says.

The NCPEDP Web site, recently inaugurated by its chairperson Sonia Gandhi, has put up a debate on the quota system as the topic of the month in its on-line forum.

CII's Sen, however, says that instead of force, the society and industry need to be sensitised to ensure that employers recruit the disabled without being asked to do so. Opposing the incentives provided by the Act for companies employing the disabled, he says, "It's like encouraging the dowry system. Take in a disabled person, and you will get such and such benefit. It would be an unproductive trend."

Abidi opines that the corporate sector has been hiding under the veil of lack of awareness in the industry. "Sensitise whom?" he asks. "Chief executives and corporate leaders who shuttle across the globe know what other nations have been doing to solve the problem," he adds.

"Though the CII has formed a core group including representatives from the industry and non-governmental organisations, or NGOs, to address the issue, nothing concrete has come out of it as yet," Abidi says. The NCPEDP has been urging the CII to pressure the government to spell out the incentives as said in the act, "but they are shying away," says Abidi, who is also the chief executive of NCPEDP.

The incentive-based system has worked wonders in China, which employs 70 per cent of the disabled capable of working. Though there is no quota system in the US and Britain, there are clear-cut laws protecting the people with disabilities.

In Germany and Japan, an employer who fails to fill his quota is expected to contribute to a compensation fund. In France, enterprises with more than 10 employees have to offer 10 per cent of the jobs to the disabled.

Closer home, even Pakistan has a fixed one per cent quota for all establishments with 100 or more employees, Abidi pointed out.

UNI

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