Minister of People Empowerment Kirk Humphrey on Friday signalled that public policy will bring an end to discrimination against would-be employees who are disabled, even as he demanded an end to prejudice and barriers limiting employment opportunities for people with disabilities. He described the issue as a “serious conversion” that needs to take place.
Humphrey highlighted a new policy on disabilities and draft legislation that proposes organisations hire a percentage of their workforce from the disabled community.
The minister suggested implementing a form of positive discrimination. “There’s still going to be a desire and a need for us to put in place a kind of positive discrimination whereby even though people may have access to school, we recognise that having a disability sometimes makes it a little bit more difficult; we have to open doors deliberately to allow people to have those opportunities,” he said during the opening of a four-day workshop titled Leading With Purpose, held at Wyndham Grand Barbados Sam Lord’s Castle in Long Bay, St Philip.
“It [the policy and legislation] has a position on work where you’re saying that persons with disabilities should be hired at a percentage of the organisation so that if you have X amount of people in your organisation, that one or two should be hired,” he explained.
While expressing reservations about quotas, the minister stressed the need for action: “While I don’t particularly love the idea of quotas, we have to do something to ensure that persons with disabilities are hired because it’s not often the case that employers do it willingly. There are some who do it willingly but there are many cases where they do not do it.”
At the launch of a leadership and training workshop organised by the Barbados National Organisation of the Disabled (BARNOD), Humphrey called for a level playing field to ensure the disabled community has a fair chance at gaining meaningful employment.
The minister highlighted a deep-rooted bias towards employing people with disabilities in Barbadian employment culture. He argued that while people should gain employment based on merit, those with disabilities were often excluded from the system altogether.
Humphrey pointed out several challenges faced by the disabled community, including difficulties in attaining qualifications due to issues within the education system and transportation problems impacting their ability to commute to work.
He said: “It is important that we empower people in a way that they can go out on the basis of what they bring to the table. The barriers that society has put in place preventing them from being able to bring things to the table must be broken down so that we allow persons with disabilities to work in this country as we do for any other citizen in this country.”
The workshop aims to train about ten BARNOD members in areas such as corporate governance, etiquette, effective communication, and financial management.
(SZB)
