Disabled people lobby businesses for access to jobs

Officials from the International Labour Organisation, the Myanmar Initiative Group for the Disabled and the employers who have employees with disabilities were among those attending the forum.

“If we provide cash to the disabled, they can only buy food, but if we can provide them jobs they can take care of themselves for their entire life,” said Nay Lin Soe, chairman of Myanmar Initiative Group for the Disabled. The group is rallying people with disabilities to lobby parliamentarians to include employment incentives and bans on discrimination in a disability bill drafted in 2012. “If we want a better Myanmar we have to show consideration to those living with disabilities,” Nay Lin Soe said.

People with disabilities face physical, psychological, and policy hurdles. Job advertisements often preclude them from even applying as they stipulate “physical strength” as a requirement.  

A survey in 2009 found 1.3 million people living with disabilities in Myanmar and that 85 per cent were jobless, 62 per cent were landless and 52 per cent lacked formal education.

Myanmar signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Persons with Disabilities on December 7, 2011, but has yet to pass new legislation protecting the rights of disabled people. A bill drafted in 2012 has yet to pass Parliament. It is intended to update legislation passed in 1958, which was considered progressive at the time though critics say it was not implemented. People with disabilities want the right to employment to be enshrined in the legislation.

According to the World Health Organisation, Over 1 billion people, 15 per cent of the world’s population, live with some form of disability. Southeast Asia has the 2nd highest prevalence of disability with 16 per cent having a moderate or severe disability, of which 2.9 per cent are severely disabled.

In its report titled “Disability in the Southeast Asia Region, 2013”, in 2009, WHO said that the number of people with disability in Myanmar is 2.4 per cent of population. Mobility disability is the No 1 impairment, followed by visual impairment, speech and hearing impediments, and intellectual disability. 

Countries in the region have adopted different policies to assist people with disabilities. Nepal has reduced tax duties for institutions importing assistive devices. Bangladesh and India have unconditional cash-transfer programmes targetted at poor people and households with a disabled member. Thailand has enforced a law to have private companies employ people with disabilities, at the ratio of 1 per 100 employees.

According to the WHO, the 10 countries – Bangladesh, Bhutan, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Timor-leste – all have national plans for disability prevention and rehabilitation. During 2010-2012, Myanmar’s Ministry of Social Welfare and Resettlement and Ministry of Health launched a national plan for persons with disability.  

The Leprosy Mission International launched a mission in Myanmar, as part of this plan. It trains people with disabilities caused by leprosy. In the recent census, it also provided technical support, producing 30,000 copies of a teaching DVDs for supervisors, and 150,000 two-page guides to advise all enumerators on disability questions and answers. The effort aimed to gather more accurate information on people with disabilities in Myanmar.

The disabled in the country have complained about hardships. Equality Myanmar, a rights group, recently launched a complaint on the lack of a convenient mechanism for reporting incidents of violence. It believes the lack of a mechanism has led to increasing assaults against disabled people.

Although the lack of such a mechanism is only a factor that could help prevent attacks, advocates for disabled rights argue that the current laws do not protect vulnerable people. 

“Do the descriptions in the disability laws really defend the disabled?” said Aung Myo Min from Equality Myanmar.

Sexual assaults against handicapped girls are most common, occurring mostly in the conflict-prone and rural areas.