Three per cent of population has disability

Three per cent of the Maltese population is registered as having a disability with the National Commission for Persons with a Disability.

The National Statistics Office said that last year, 11,532 people, representing three per cent of the population, were registered.

54 per cent of people with disability were made. Disabilities were most prevalent in the older age groups, particularly among those aged 75 and over.

These accounted for 29 per cent of the total number of people registered as having a disability.

Of all those registered disabilities, 7,801 had a physical impairment. A total 63 per cent of these were aged 60 and over.

A total of 9,417 people had a special identity card.

In the same year, 6,458 persons had a blue sticker, which enabled them to park their cars in reserved spaces in public car parks. There were also 278 new applications for exemption from payment of car registration tax and/or customs duty.

The NSO said that in 2008 there were 5,750 people aged between 16 and 64, whose self-defined economic status was reported as being permanently disabled and/or unfit to work.

The average annual disposable income of these people was €8,582, 25 per cent lower than the average annual disposable income of all people living in private households.

When compared to 2004, the government’s expenditure on disability pensions increased by 22 per cent. Over the same span of years, the number of beneficiaries increased by seven per cent.

In 2008, the number of people with a disability registering under Part 1 of the unemployment register totalled 299. This was equivalent to an increase of nine per cent over the previous year.

In 2005, 12 per cent of people with disabilities were living in institutional households. As at November 2005, 29 per cent of were living in the northern harbour district, the most populated one in Malta.

As at 2005, four per cent of people with disabilities had achieved a tertiary level of education. 58 per cent of people aged 15 and over having a disability stopped studying after achieving, at most, a primary level of education.