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Unemployment is biggest problem of disabled
Mahmut Kaçar, general secretary of the Civil Servants' Trade Union (Memur-Sen) and chairperson of the Turkish Health Union (Sağlık-Sen), said statistics show that labor participation of the disabled remains at 22 percent compared to a general labor participation rate of 50 percent in the country. “The right to work, which is the best indicator of social participation and which is a basic human right, remains a problem for disabled citizens,” he stated yesterday on the occasion of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.
Kaçar reminded listeners of the Disability Act, which was passed in July 2005 to solve employment problems that disabled people face along with a number of other issues. But he said the law has not been put into practice in all sectors.
The Labor Law and the Regulation on the Employment of Disabled People states that employers in the private sector employing more than 50 employees in their workplace must ensure that at least 3 percent of their employees are disabled. This figure is 4 percent for public institutions. If they do not meet this quota, they have to pay a fine of TL 1,519 per month, which is collected in a levy fund and used for projects focusing on vocational training, rehabilitation and employment for disabled people. In order to encourage companies to hire more disabled people, the Treasury also pays half of the insurance premiums for every disabled person hired in addition to the mandatory number. However, despite all these incentives, employers are still reluctant to hire disabled workers. The total amount in the levy fund was TL 4.8 million according to 2005 figures.
 Statistics show that one of the biggest problems facing Turks with disabilities is unemployment, with the labor participation of this segment of society hovering around 22 percent compared to a general labor participation rate of 50 percent. |
Lawyer Meysun Güler Eryıldır, who heads the commission on the disabled at the Bursa Bar Association, also stated that laws should be implemented as soon as possible to solve the problems of the disabled.
“Problems of the disabled are not solved merely by having appropriate laws [on the books]. These laws should be implemented. And people at workplaces from the top to the bottom should know about the rights of the disabled,” Eryıldır said.
In Bursa, disabled people held a demonstration in their wheelchairs to attract attention to their problems.
One of their signs read “We don’t want to be remembered only on Dec. 3.”
The International Day of Persons with Disabilities was marked in various provinces in Turkey. In Antalya, there were celebrations in the town square.
Mehmet Karavural, head of the Association of the Disabled in Turkey, expressed that disabled people face many difficulties. Among those, he said, was the difficulty to obtain prostheses and necessary aids to make their lives easier because of the new social security law.
“The duties and responsibilities of the state are on the shoulders of the families now,” he said.
Meanwhile, a supportive note for the disabled came yesterday from Parliament Speaker Mehmet Ali Şahin. He said Turkey has made some progress in improving the quality of life for the disabled but that there is still work to do. “We will make more progress in that regard as we will take more measures to improve the rights of the disabled,” he said.
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