The development of skills of people with disabilities is a worthwhile goal, but what happens afterwards?
The Skills Development Act states that an employer should be spending about four percent of its skills budget on persons with disabilities. The Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) Act provides an employer with four bonus points if it meets a disability skills development target of 0,3 percent.
The Tax Act provides a tax allowance of R120 000 for a learner with a disability who completes a learnership. The legislative framework provides employers with many options to support the upskilling and employment of persons with disabilities. However, disability employment is still lingering around the one percent mark, where it should be at 7,5 percent.
NQF level prohibits access
There are many opportunities for persons with disabilities to enter learnerships, primarily in the major city centres. However, very often the entry criteria are at a National Qualifications Framework (NQF) 4 level, which means that applicants need to have matric, often with English as a first language and mathematics.
Even if the NQF level is lower, the educational gap often experienced by persons with disabilities excludes them from these opportunities. There are thus fewer suitable candidates with a greater demand, which leads to another set of systemic challenges. A learner will be registered on two qualifications concurrently and benefiting from both stipends – which is an illegal practice.
No employment after learnerships
Employers also do not always provide employment for learners with disabilities after the learnership. Instead, they offer more learnerships to continuously gain the benefits of the Skills Development Act. People with disabilities get caught in another systemic challenge where they become perpetual learners in the skills development system; doing learnership after learnership, which never results in their permanent employment.
Disability organisations and SETA to the rescue
This is where disability organisations and the Services Sector Education and Training Authority (Services SETA) need to play a more prominent role. There are huge opportunities for organisations to assist persons with disabilities on their skills path and benefit from the SETA grants and Employee Tax Incentives.
Disability organisations could appeal to donors to fund the person with a disability in their skills development programmes as well as the companies that need to employ the qualified persons with disabilities. Employers should be canvassing their respective SETAs to develop the supply of persons with disabilities in their respective industries as well.
These interventions should go beyond just making Disability Grants for the employers available, but the SETAs should be collaborating with the disability organisations to achieve such a common goal. In certain industries and SETAs, some exemplary work has been done and the goals achieved clearly demonstrate the impact.
However, there is much work still to be done to meet the legislative targets for persons with disabilities in skills development and to have an impact on the disability employment target of 7,5 percent.
Rustim Ariefdien is a disability expert extraordinaire, who assists businesses to “let the Ability of disAbility enAble their profitAbility” through BBBEE, skills development, employment equity and socio-economic development. He ensures that businesses are able to maximise their points on the BBBEE scorecard and become compliant with legislative requirements as stipulated in the Employment Equity and Skills Development Acts. His purpose is the economic empowerment of persons with disability in Africa. As a person with a disability himself, he has extensive experience in the development and empowerment of persons with disability.
