....disabled individuals are forced to open their businesses since it is difficult for them to enter the labour market
Jakarta (ANTARA) - Manpower Minister Ida Fauziyah drew attention to several issues that should be addressed to encourage greater absorption of disabled workers into the labour market, including the fact that most of them have low educational levels.

Based on the Statistics Indonesia (BPS) data, the number of disabled workers decreased, from 7.67 million in 2020 to 7.04 million in 2021, she remarked.

This is one of the indicators of the pandemic's impact on disabled individuals, she noted during the National Award Ceremony for Companies and SOEs that Employ Disabled here, Monday.

"The latest report from the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Indonesia also shows other important data in which the education level became a major challenge for disabled individuals to get decent jobs," she noted.

According to ILO's data, a total of 70-80 percent of disabled people had only completed primary school.

Moreover, most of the disabled individuals are working in the agriculture, forestry, animal farming, and fishery sectors that are dominated by informal workers.

Several disabled workers also work in the trade, restaurant, and hotel sectors that bore a major brunt from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fauziyah also highlighted the increasing trend of disabled individuals, who become entrepreneurs, i.e., 1.5 times higher as compared to non-disabled individuals.

"At a glance, this finding sounds positive since many disabled workers became entrepreneurs," she remarked.

"However, I have to inform that this shows that disabled individuals are forced to open their businesses since it is difficult for them to enter the labour market," she added.

This is also due to the lack of alternative jobs for disabled individuals to work on in addition to the fact that not many companies have the awareness to recruit disabled manpower.

President Joko Widodo has given clear directives regarding this issue on few occasions, the minister pointed out.

Specifically, the focus was on implementing existing regulations on disability into development programs that connect with the lives of disabled individuals.

To this end, Fauziyah urged all manpower stakeholders to continue to bolster the implementation from such regulations, such as Law No. 8 of 2016 on Disabled Individuals.

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Translator: Prisca T V, Fadhli Ruhman
Editor: Sri Haryati
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