Pretoria - Government is concerned that it has fallen behind the private sector with regard to the employment of people with disabilities.
Minister for Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities, Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya said on Thursday the country has to put more effort into increasing persons with disabilities in the economy.
"We have put the target of 2 percent of employment of people with disabilities as part of the total workforce. It is disturbing to note that the country is not making sufficient progress towards meeting this target as we are currently at 0.9 percent.
"The latest figures indicate that government has fallen behind the private sector with regard to employment of persons with disabilities. People with disabilities constituted 0.6 percent of state employees (at 6 000) while the private sector was at 1 percent (about 35 000 employees) in 2009," said the minister.
She encouraged the private sector to continue to increase the number of employees with disabilities as employing persons with disabilities made business sense.
"By employing the adequate number of people with disabilities and investing in them in terms of skills, development can attain a company up 5 points in their rating for Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment and there are tax benefits that come with that.
"We would still want the social responsibility programmes of the private sector to continue to focus on the socio-economic empowerment of women, children and persons with disabilities," she said.
Government is to implement a monitoring and evaluation tool that will serve to measure short, medium and long-term progress made in delivering services to persons with disabilities.
"In line with this mandate of mainstreaming and oversight, we are going to ensure that every government department meets its individual obligation with regard to employment of persons with disabilities," she said.
There is a need to increase the number of children with disabilities who enrol and progress successfully through the school system and ensure that institutions of higher learning register and provide adequate support for students with disabilities.
"If we can make progress on access to education, we can ensure that there is adequate number of skilled people with disabilities. We have to do away with an excuse that there are no skilled people available in the labour market to meet the 2 percent target," the minister said, adding that all have an obligation to invest in this area.
She said government had made progress in the provision of social support to persons with disabilities.
The number of persons with disabilities accessing disability grants increased from 694 000 in 2002 to 1.2 million this year at R1 080 per person per month.
The same amount of Care Dependency Grant is provided to caregivers of children with disabilities.
"People with disabilities now constitute the third largest group of social grant beneficiaries after those receiving child support grant and old age pension," the minister said.
