SINGAPORE
Singapore Departments and Agencies are allowed to hire as many people with disabilities as they want as these officers are not counted towards staff numbers, Parliament has been told.
Minister-in-charge of the Public Service, Chan Chun Sing (pictured) was answering a question about whether he would consider setting a target for the public sector to hire people with special needs to make it more inclusive.
One MP, Denise Phua pointed out that the sector currently employed a “dismal” 365 special needs persons out of some 150,000 officers.
Mr Chan said setting targets would lead to tokenism and the best incentive for the Public Service to hire “differently abled individuals” was by not counting their employment under the usual staff headcount.
“That way, the Agencies can employ more persons with special needs and would be incentivised to do so when manpower is tight,” Mr Chan said.
“We really don’t want people to meet the target for the sake of meeting the target.”
He said he wanted people to look at people based on what they could do and focus on their abilities instead of disabilities, and fit them into a job by redesigning the job to fit the person.
Mr Chan said the current employment rate of people with special needs in the public sector was already “over and above” the usual staff quotas.
He also called for greater efforts in promoting inclusive hiring practices by sharing testimonies and practices.
“My assurance to the public is that the Public Service has the attitude to go forth and is not constrained by the manpower quotas in the usual sense,” Mr Chan said.
He said the public sector employed more than 300 “differently abled individuals” as of the end of last year, but the Government did not track the number of officers who were recovering from mental health conditions.
Singapore, 10 March 2019
