Disabled still marginalised in EC state employment

Two departments of 14 meet lowly minimum target of 2% in workforce

ONLY two out of 14 provincial government departments have met the target of employing a 2% staff complement of people living with disabilities.

Premier Phumulo Masualle’s office and the department of safety and liaison are the only beacons shining when it comes to giving job opportunities to vulnerable disabled people, the Bhisho legislature has revealed.

The departments of health and education, which account for the lion’s share of the provincial budget and employ the most civil servants, are lagging far behind, with only 0.2% and 0.3% respectively of their staff being disabled.

This was revealed in a standing committee on special programmes report tabled in the provincial legislature on Tuesday.

This did not sit well with the Disabled People of South Africa (DPSA) organisation.

Committee chairwoman Nomxolisi Mtitshana also revealed that the departments of social development and human settlements were the only two that met the 50-50 gender equity policy at senior management service (SMS) levels.

Mtitshana told the legislature that Masualle’s office needed to up the tempo in enforcing gender equity policies in their own department.

“The office of the premier needs to be part of those departments that have achieved the 50-50 gender equity targets in order to set an example,” she said.

Mtitshana also called on Masualle to “impress upon” members of his cabinet “the need to meet targets” when it came to employing people with disabilities.

The DPSA’s Thabiso Petuka said it showed a lack of interest by some departments despite legislation and many policies.

He said people living with disability had been struggling to have “a meaningful engagement” on the matter with some departments.

“As the disability sector, we are largely seen as charity cases by these departments.

“They only speak about us as part of a box-ticking exercise. We are not respected and regarded as people by our own government.

“The only time we are alive to them is during disability awareness month between November 3 and December 3. After that period, to them we are dead,” said Petuka.

He said they had engaged Masualle, who promised to crack the whip on departments that did not meet the 2% quota “but nothing has come out of that promise”.

Mtitshana’s committee also raised concerns about the fact that the structures of the special programme units (SPU) were not the same in all provincial departments.

She said such structures in departments had different numbers of personnel whose job levels were not the same. There was also “confusion amongst the departments as to where SPUs should be located”.

The SPU is a sub-unit at Masualle’s office, which aims to exercise oversight over the special programmes coordinating unit in that office and other departments.

In the year under review, R10.4million was allocated to the SPU, with over R6.9-million of that spent largely on staff salaries.

Mtitshana said her committee was not pleased with the fact most SPUs in provincial departments, except that of the premier’s office, were managed by people who were not part of senior management in their respective departments.

DA MPL Celeste Barker yesterday said it was “a known and repeated fact that rural black women have been marginalised and financially excluded to the point that their bodies have been commodified for generations and their opportunities for growth and development limited”.

“The DA calls on the SPU in our provincial legislature to translate gender and disability jargon into equality of access, training, jobs and opportunities for all historically excluded women in the Eastern Cape,” Barker said. —