Prince Salman Center for Disability and Research (PSCDR) will hold a lecture on Oct. 3 on the attitudes and concerns of employers about hiring individuals with disabilities in Saudi Arabia.
“The lecture will discuss a study that has investigated the attitudes and concerns of employers through a questionnaire distributed to different employers in the country,” PSCDR said.
Mourad Mansour, assistant professor at the College of Industrial Management of King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran, will deliver the lecture.
The lecture is timely as employers are still hesitant to hire people with special needs, like Ammar Bouqs, an outstanding graduate whose request for employment at King Abdulaziz University (KAU) in Jeddah was turned down recently.
He applied for a post of tutor at KAU and contacted the president of the university in person, who told him that the matter was being examined.
Consequently, Crown Prince Salman, deputy premier and defense minister, instructed Prince Sultan bin Salman, chairman of the Saudi Disabled Children’s Association, to follow up the case.
“Bouqs belongs to a section of people very dear to us, and I have been demanding they should not be called ‘people with special needs’, but ‘people with special gifts’,” Prince Sultan, who is also chairman of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities, said.
Earlier, Qasim Al-Enizy, a devoted administrative assistant at a government hospital in Riyadh, applied for a job as accountant. However, he was bound to his wheelchair and was told the job needed mobility.
“I looked for jobs in other places. I passed all qualification tests, but when it came to recruiting they raised the issue of their inability to make the workplace accessible to the disabled,” he said.
The hesitation to hire disabled people is due to a host of reasons, such as productivity, work performance and lack of employee skills. In a study, questionnaires were sent to employers asking them if they had employed an individual with special needs during the past five years, and if yes, what kind of disability they had.
Nearly two-thirds said they had employed disabled people during the past five years, and their disabilities included impaired vision and learning (one case each), hearing and speaking (five cases each) and mobility and dexterity disabilities (7 cases).
The employers were also asked about their concerns when hiring individuals with special needs. Four factors were identified: individual, management, cost and social factors.
When asked whether they had a policy regarding the employment of disabled people, only 18 percent said they did.
Disability in the Arab world is growing as a result of mainly three reasons: violence, poverty and malnutrition.
People with disabilities are endowed with abilities and potential that will make them effectively participate with other social groups in achieving comprehensive development of the Arab world if they have equal opportunities and suitable training and rehabilitation conditions, according to the study.
In Saudi Arabia there are laws to accommodate people with disabilities, but society is still free to notify job applicants with handicaps that they cannot hire them specifically because of their condition.
The Kingdom has been making efforts to take care of people with special needs. Riyadh has been declared as the Kingdom’s first disabled-friendly city. In May 2010, then Riyadh Governor and now Crown Prince and Defense Minister Prince Salman signed a series of agreements for disability accessibility between the PSCDR and a number of government departments.
Talking on the occasion, he said: “Saudi Arabia is proud of being called a humanitarian Kingdom and its king is called the humanitarian king.” He urged all relevant government departments and private agencies to cooperate with the project.
The project, Prince Salman said, does not target “the disabled alone but also offers development of the environment for all members of society in order to reach public and private places like shopping centers, commercial institutions, car parks, schools, mosques and home.”
PSCDR lecture to highlight concerns in hiring disabled
