Group canvasses creation of disability smart business environment

A group Sightsavers Nigeria has begun the campaign for the creation of a disability-smart business environment for persons with disabilities to enable job seekers to blend with the soft skill training in the country.

In addition, it stated the aim of the pet project was to generate evidence on how the labour market system could embrace physically- challenged persons, saying, “There is productivity in disability.”

Country Director, Dr. Sunday Isiyaku, who spoke at Inclusion Works-Closeout Ceremony in Abuja, said: “We intend to invest in persons living with disabilities to measure their economic contributions to businesses.”

Isiyaku said the soft skill training proved significantly successful as “we have seen more than 200 people transiting into employment in the course of inclusion works, and we hope to serve as the drivers of the project of implementation.”

“We can only realise change when critical stakeholders come together to commit and deploy their resources through a public-private partnership.”

Also, Esther Akinnukawe of MTN Nigeria, said their Foundation has been an advocate for inclusion in the society in different ways, including supporting the Federal Government on Disability Act and celebrating the Day yearly.

Akinnukawe regretted that lack of accessible facilities was one of the challenges they faced in employing persons with disabilities, pledging to support the Inclusion Works Project embarked upon by Sightsavers.

On his part, Executive Secretary, National Commission for Persons with Disability, Mr. James Lalu called on government agencies and employers to ensure five percent of their workforce are from this group before January 2024.

“We have a data bank of 50,000 people with disabilities, and also have 500 who are fully qualified at the moment, and others whose data is not very well are refilling their information so that we can send them to different organizations,” Lalu added.