14 May 2010 / TODAY’S ZAMAN, İSTANBUL
Both employers and the disabled should be aware of their responsibilities and act accordingly in order to ensure the integration of people with disabilities into working life, Labor and Social Security Minister Ömer Dinçer has said.
Employers should not hire disabled people because of the law, currently a requisite 3 percent of the total workforce, but in a bid to benefit from the potential of these people, which will in the end add to the development of the country, Dinçer noted. Disabled people, on the other hand, should try to carry out their tasks at least as well as their able-bodied counterparts and not just rely on the law, he continued. “But most importantly they should try to gain the requisite knowledge necessary for a particular job. The Turkish Employment Organization (İŞKUR) is there for their service to train them in any vocational program,” said the minister.Dinçer was speaking yesterday at a panel discussion titled “The problems that disabled people encounter in working life and solutions offered,” which was organized by the Labor and Social Security Ministry and attended by several nongovernmental organizations. He remarked that societies may also be “disabled,” by turning a deaf ear to the problems of its disabled people. “Our society will stop being disabled if all parts of it -- employers, public institutions, the private sector and disabled people -- carry their own weight,” said Dinçer.
