Career discrimination for people with physical disabilities has been a long overdue discussion. Many countries, including Southeast Asian countries, are still struggling to reach a decent employment rate of the disabled community. Governments have tried to enforce companies to hire disabled people through regulations. For example, Indonesian government require companies to employ disabled people for at least 1% of their total employees. However, according to the Ministry of Manpower, only 1,2% employees from 440 companies are from disabled community as per October 2018. Employment for disabled people is even rare in the government itself, let alone companies.
According to an analysis by LPEM FEB UI (Lembaga Penyelidikan Ekonomi dan Masyarakat Fakultas Ekonomi dan Bisnis Universitas Indonesia or Institute for Economic and Community Investigation, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Indonesia), the number of disabled workers in informal fields is higher than non-disabled workers. Minor disabled workers participate 64,93% and severely disabled workers took up 75,8% while non-disabled workers are only 49,27 percent. In other words, disabled workers have less chance to participate in formal fields (corporate or institutional jobs).
In terms of wage, minor disabled workers receive around 14% lower wage than non-disabled workers. The gap is higher for severely disabled workers with 32% lower wage rate than non-disabled workers. This difference is mostly due to disabled workers’ level of education as they are also limited in access to higher education.
Most of the times, government and other influential institutions have come up with the same solution: entrepreneurial trainings. The programs could vary in form, but the main purpose is to hone craftsmanship skills for disabled people so they could create employment for themselves and maybe others. It sounds like a noble purpose, but up until now these programs still couldn’t raise a significant employment rate for the disabled. In reality, many of them are unable to become entrepreneurs or work as freelance professional simply because they don’t naturally have entrepreneurial skills and still need a company or any established institution to channel their skills. Since most of them are unemployed from the beginning, many are not able to provide or gather the capital needed to start a business.
Usually, the skills taught in the trainings are around the field of handicraft, health (mostly massage), beauty or culinary. Yet they are not trained to be “knowledge workers” who own skills such as marketing, auditing, programming, academics and so on. The skills taught for disabled people direct them to inferior jobs with unstable income, relying much on their physical abilities (ironically) rather than their ideas. Thus, the disabled are still limited as to their access for a wider range of skills and knowledge.
Trainings are supposed to enable the disabled to explore their other potential. They are physically limited, but their minds’ ability is not (unless they suffer from mental illness, which is another line of topic). They have as much potential as those with able bodies, especially for desk bound jobs with more paperwork than physical mobility. Disabled people should be encouraged to participate more in the workforce and directed for high-earning, respectable and stable jobs.