TheJakartaPost
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Deaf youth demand better employment opportunities
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Storytelling: Ricendy Januard shares his story during the Ini Cerita Kita (This is Our Story) Festival at the National Library in Jakarta on May 25. People with disabilities find it extra challenging to work in the formal sector. (JP/Kurniawan Ulung S)
Millennials find it hard to land a job in the capital. That statement is even more accurate for people with disabilities.
Often pushed to work in the informal sector, deaf people in particular need better access to both education and employment.
The 2016 Disability Law stipulates that state-owned enterprises (BUMN) must reserve 2 percent of the jobs they offer for people with disabilities, while private companies must reserve 1 percent.
However, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO), only 54.6 percent of the people with mild disability and 18.3 percent of the people with severe disability were employed in Indonesia in 2017.
More than 70 percent of those people worked in the informal sector, such as being self-employment or doing home-based work.
“I am the only disabled employee in my office,” said Bagja Prawira, 25, who works as a marketing manager at a pharmaceutical company in Jakarta. He added that the company should hire about 50 people with disabilities for its workforce of 5,000.
Bagja, who is deaf, said he did not get a sign-language translator at his workplace and that he found it challenging to communicate with his coworkers. Bagja said he could talk but was not comfortable communicating that way, because he could not control his volume.
