Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday appealed to all government and private institutions to recruit more people with disabilities before the end of 2013 so as to fulfill a quota stipulated by a 2010 sub-decree.
Speaking during a U.N.-organized conference on the rights of people living with disabilities, Mr. Hun Sen said private and public institutions are far from reaching a quota which requires that 2 percent of workers hired by government bodies, and 1 percent employed in the private sector, be people with disabilities. This edict, enacted to help improve the situations of the more than 190,000 disabled people in Cambodia, is supposed to be met by the end of 2013.
“Now, some institutions have implemented this and some have not,” Mr. Hun Sen said, adding that government bodies should employ disabled people locally so they do not need to travel far to work.
“Government institutions need to recruit disabled people at a sub-national level and provide them with jobs near their home…as many of the disabled people are not in Phnom Penh,” he said.
Mr. Hun Sen, who lost an eye while fighting with the Khmer Rouge, added that he had done his part by hiring three blind people.
“I myself employed three blind people as my personal secretaries to work for me. Two are from Battambang province and one is from Phnom Penh,” he said.
According to Social Affairs Minister Ith Sam Heng, government institutions nationwide have employed 1,603 disabled persons in the past two years, or about 0.78 percent of the country’s civil servants.
