HÀ NỘI - Although the Government and citizens offer some support to people with disabilities, much more needs to be done, according to officials.

This was affirmed by delegates at the workshop entitled ‘Policies and credit solutions for developing vocational training, creating jobs and introducing products of people with disabilities’ which was held in Hà Nội on Thursday by the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) in collaboration with Việt Nam Social Policy Bank (SPB) and Nippon Japan Foundation.

Participants said that in the past three years, vocational training and job creation for the disabled have encountered many difficulties.

Many organisations and businesses have worked to create jobs for disabled people but co-ordination has been poor, and there was no agency responsible for monitoring and researching the number of people with disabilities or how many need vocational training or jobs.

In addition, the preferential fund for people with disabilities was still limited, delegates said.

According to Lê Tấn Dũng, deputy minister of MOLISA, the loan source for disabled people and enterprises employing disabled people mostly came from the National Fund for Employment and from Nippon.

At present, there was no source of capital dedicated for people with disabilities to develop economically, he said.

People with disabilities still struggled to access loans because the Government has no mechanism for allocation of these loans, said Nguyễn Văn Lý, deputy general director of SPB.

A SPB report shows that in 2017, more than 2,365 projects of people with disabilities and enterprises employing disabled labourers have received loans, creating jobs for 2,540 disabled workers.

However, more than 11,000 disabled people need loans, Lý said.

Director of the Sóc Sơn Handicraft Co-operative, Đinh Thị Quỳnh Nga, said to help disabled people, agencies need to provide preferential policies to people with disabilities that are members of co-operatives and help the co-operatives access loans with low interest rates.

Lý also said the Government should continue improving the system of legal documents on people with disabilities, helping them benefit from the policies of the State.

At the same time, the Government should pay more attention to vocational training and allocate resources for credit policy programmes, he said.

According to the MOLISA, Việt Nam now has about eight million people with disabilities.

Some 87.27 per cent of them live in rural areas, 65 per cent are working age yet only 30 per cent are employed.

There are many stores displaying products made by people with disabilities on the sidelines of the workshop, helping them exchange experience and access information on vocational training, financial services, banking and insurance. – VNS