Saudi looks to put 100,000 disabled people in jobs

The Saudi government is planning to offer private employers incentives to hire 100,000 disabled people, according to local media.

About 183,000 disabled Saudis are registered as looking for work in the country and about 100,000 of them were capable of working if they were given proper training and guidance, an adviser to the Ministry of Labour said.

Many had high school and university education.

“A new programme named Tawafuk has been devised to get the handicapped employed in the private sector with the support of the Human Resource Development Fund,” Mirfat Tashkandi said at a conference on Wednesday, according to Arab News.

“The main problem facing this group of Saudi nationals to get employed is lack of transportation.”

There are an estimated 4.15m handicapped people in Saudi Arabia.

About 60 percent of the nation’s unemployed disabled were women, she said. Most were aged 22-35.

The unemployment rate for females in Saudi Arabia is 36 percent, according to the Ministry of Labour. That compares to 6.1 percent for men.