CAIRO: Government bodies will not be allowed to announce job vacancies before filling the five percent quota of people with disabilities among their staff, the Central Agency for Organization and Administration (CAOA) announced. Mostafa El Tohamy, head of the CAOA, made the announcement in a statement released Monday. All private and public sector companies in Egypt are obliged by law to maintain this quota, but the law is rarely enforced. People with disabilities were first included in the Egyptian labor law in 1959, with an article stipulating that all businesses must dedicate two percent of their jobs to people with mental or physical disabilities. This percentage was later increased to five in 1982, while also extending the reach of the quota to the private sector. Statistics vary with regards to the number of people with special needs in Egypt. According to some statistics, 10 to 12 percent of the population fall into this category. However, the official Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics in Egypt (CAPMAS) says that the numbers do not exceed 3.4 percent. Over the past couple of months, people with disabilities have been protesting in front of the Cairo governorate headquarters and Parliament, demanding their rights through the enforcement of the five-percent-quota law. On Monday, the Human Rights committee at the People's Assembly convened to discuss the issue. According to news reports, MPs criticized the government for not abiding by the law, even though there are still job vacancies. The committee concluded that people with disabilities prefer working for the public sector rather than private sector, despite the fact that the latter offers more job opportunities, with an estimate 200,000 jobs available, according to reports. Adeela Abdel Aziz, advisor to the Minister of Administrative Development, told the Daily News Egypt, that the government will strictly abide by the law when they start hiring and people with disabilities will certainly get their rights. "There have been 25,000 job opportunities made for people with disabilities in the government between the period of 2000 and 2004, she said.
