There is a need for a fund that could help create and increase jobs for people with disabilities, Emmanuel Ndayisaba, the Executive Secretary of National Council of Persons with Disabilities has made the case.

"A majority of public and private institutions shun from employing people with disabilities. That is why we are proposing the fund through which those shun employing people with disabilities can also contribute to help create jobs for disabled people,” he said.

He said conducting a feasibility study for the fund is expected to start next fiscal year.

"We are seeking a budget for the study which we have been asked to carry out,” he said.

Ndayisaba said that a quota system is also needed in the labour market whereby employers should be required to dedicate at least 5 per cent of positions to persons living with disability.

Quota system is a method whereby a regulator sets a limit on how much of something a country or company is allowed to have etc.

The move, he said, would reduce the unemployment rate among disabled people.

"We suggest that the companies get incentives once they allocate 5 per cent of jobs to people with disabilities. The incentives can be in different forms such as reducing taxes for them among others,” he said.

Devising more creation programmes

Satir Omar Bahati, The Executive Director of Uwezo Youth Empowerment organization said that more support in training people with disabilities on business and entrepreneurship is needed.

"They need skills on access to finance. We have been training youth and we also provide them with financial support to create jobs. We continue to advocate for them so that they benefit from various opportunities including digital inclusion,” he said.

By training the people with disabilities especially youth in TVET for between three and six months, more jobs could be created.

"The skills that help them create jobs include agriculture, tailoring, weaving, culinary art among others,” he said.

So far, he said, about 900 youth with disabilities have been trained.

"During the 2018 Global Disability Summit, Rwanda pledged to have created 2,000 jobs for people with disabilities. More jobs need to be created and reduce unemployment,” he said.

The National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda has adopted the recommendation of the UN formed Washington Group on Disability Statistics and the Rwanda labour force survey has been using the recommended abridged questionnaire for identifying people with disabilities and their disaggregation by labour force status and other demographic and economic characteristics.

Data collection on disabilities and on workers with disabilities aims to contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), a universal and ambitious plan of actions for ending poverty and hunger by 2030, leaving no one behind including people with disabilities.

According to the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR), unemployment rate among persons with disability was 17.4 per cent in 2017, 14.1 percent in 2018, 14.3 per cent in 2019 and 21.1 per cent in 2021.

According to the recent Labour Force Survey, the employment-to-population ratio is highest among persons with hearing impairment (18.2 per cent).

It showed that there were 259,226 people with disabilities of whom 140,798 are female.

It indicates that 36,262 are between five and 15 years while 222,964 are over 16 years.

Statistics show that 227,655 people with disabilities are in rural areas.

Over 59, 000 of which 34,614 are female have issues of seeing while 42,011 of whom 22,394 are female have issues of hearing.

It shows that 113,316 of whom 64,956 are female have issues with walking.

The rest have issues of remembering, communicating, dressing and washing.

New commitments

In February, Rwanda took part in the Global Disability Summit, a mechanism for collecting new, ambitious and widespread commitments which are critical to achieving change for persons with disabilities in the world.

During the event, Rwanda submitted 26 commitments, and it will be looking to soon start consultations with relevant stakeholders to devise ways for their realisation.

 According to Emmanuel Ndayisaba, the Executive Secretary of the National Council of Persons with Disabilities in Rwanda (NCPD), the 26 commitments are mainly about better access to education, health services, employment for the persons with disability, and how they can be given assistance during tough situations like natural calamities or wars.