The National Commission for Persons with Disabilities, the Department of Social Services and the Employment and Training Corporation are in the process of merging their registers of job-seekers with disabilities with a view to developing in-depth vocational assessments

KNPD’s Anne-Marie Callus told the House Public Accounts Committee yesterday that it would be the Department of Social Services that would determine if a person really had disabilities, if the person could work and needed support. The findings could ultimately involve a person’s eligibility for social services.

The PAC was discussing the Auditor-General’s performance audit report on employment opportunities for registered disabled persons, which had broadly found that such opportunities were much lower than the EU average.

It generally took disabled persons much longer to find employment than other job-seekers. Their employment prospects were not commensurate with their high rate of course completion, but those prospects rose after on-the-job training.

ETC acting CEO Felix Borg said the profile of job-seekers was disabilities was now stronger because they were being certified as such by a doctor or occupational therapist and thereafter allowed to join the register. One flaw in the system was that they were certified as to what they could not do, rather than what they could do.

Two recent ETC initiatives had been to identify workers who were ready to act as job coaches, and to ask advisors to champion the disabled with activities for better integration.

Social Solidarity Minister Marie Louise Coleiro Preca said it was essential to have definitions so that persons with disabilities would not be lumped into a single class. Social assessment was a sine qua non for proper profiling of the disabled.

The ETC’s schemes for between eight and 13 weeks were convenient. But once they ended and the disabled still did not find work it constituted a trauma for both the disabled and their families, almost to the point of mental disorders.

It was essential to think outside the box. The ministry’s parliamentary secretariat was currently engaged in a time-consuming exercise which, if successful, would yield great benefits. A number of disabled job-seekers were fully qualified and trained, but still without a job.

To a question by committee chairman Tonio Fenech on how the ETC’s successful Bridging The Gap Scheme could be rolled out to more people, Mr Borg said the success had been due to profiling and matching with employment. Today, employers were appreciating that disabled workers could be productive and were requesting job coaches or reference points rather than subsidies.

The discussion then turned to the two per cent quota of disabled employees expected of the Government and employers of more than 20 people.

Mr Borg said a disabled job-seeker had a right not to register as such if their disability was not very apparent, and this skewed figures for quota purposes. To date the ETC had not taken any employer to court but had banked on persuasion, even if it had not gone very far. There was no true legal enforcement.

Minister Coleiro Preca said such a rule was not easy to enforce because the issue of mentality was not yet centre-stage. It was a question of social corporate responsibility towards the disabled, who must be given employment not just as decorations but for their potential productivity.

Unfortunately there were no seamless services between the strong development in education and the needs of the disabled for meaningful employment.