5,000 more people with disabilities to start working in 2018: PM Yıldırım

ISTANBUL

Some 5,000 more people with disabilities will start working in Turkey in 2018, Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım said on Dec. 3 at an event in Istanbul marking the International Day of Person with Disabilities.

“We have ended an era in which disabled people could get jobs only with connections and favors. We have started a period of job allocation [of the disabled] through appointment from a central system. We have made an additional regulation. The Public Personnel Selection Exam [KPSS] scores of the disabled would previously be invalid after two years, but now, they will be valid for four years. These are not enough though. We’ll continue to show every kind of effort to do more,” Yıldırım said.

Disabled people make up an estimated 7 percent of the country’s population, he said, adding that Turkey introduced the Law for Disabled People for the first time in 2005.

In the field of education, he said 100,000 disabled students were transported to schools by vehicles provided by the state.

He said the government has increased the funds allocated for social aid by 27 times in 15 years, from 1.5 billion to over 38 billion.

Yıldırım also added that 366,000 disabled people were given jobs during this period.

He said the number of disabled people working in state departments today is over 50,000, from 5,000 in 2002, while 800 disabled people set up their own business with the government’s support.

The prime minister said citizens with disabilities had accomplished many successes over the past 15 years, adding that the country bagged 46 medals in the 2017 Summer Deaflympics organized in the northern province of Samsun.

The first games for the deaf, known then as the International Silent Games, were held in 1924 in Paris with athletes from nine European nations participating.

He stated the government has been working day and night to reconstruct the country over the past 15 years.

Noting mega projects such as the construction of bridges and the project for a third airport in Istanbul, Yıldırım said, “Services we provide to you, for the people, are more meaningful than these works.”

He said the fruits of the investments made can be seen even after years. “There has been continuous service to the people, without any discrimination, in our history.”