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Following is a question by the Hon Cheung Kwok-che and a written reply by the Secretary for the Civil Service, Miss Denise Yue, in the Legislative Council today (January 5):
Question:
At present, there are about 400,000 persons with disabilities (PWDs) in Hong Kong. The authorities have not only enacted legislation to eliminate discrimination against employees with disabilities, but have also encouraged enterprises to employ PWDs so that PWDs can give full play to their strength and skills. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:
(a) whether at present the Government has a policy that requires various government departments to employ PWDs up to a certain percentage; if it has, of the details; if not, the reasons for that;
(b) of the respective numbers of civil servants with disabilities employed and government staff with disabilities employed on non-civil service terms by the Government in the past three years, together with a breakdown by government department; and
(c) whether the Government will implement a quota system for employing PWDs; if it will, of the details; if not, the reasons for that?
Reply:
President,
With regard to parts (a) and (c) of the question, the Administration is committed to promoting the employment of people with disabilities and ensuring that they enjoy equal opportunity of participating in productive and gainful employment in the open market. As an employer, the Administration provides employment opportunities for them through enabling civil service job applicants with disabilities to compete with other able-bodied applicants on equal grounds. Candidates with disabilities who meet the basic entry requirements for a post will not be subject to any shortlisting criteria and will be automatically invited to attend selection interviews. Once these candidates are considered suitable by the selection board to carry out the duties of a particular post, they would normally be recommended for appointment even though they may not be able, due to their disabilities, to perform the full range of duties of every post in the same rank.
At the community level, the Administration considers that people with disabilities should be assisted to find appropriate jobs on the basis of their abilities. To this end, apart from providing vocational training and employment support for persons with disabilities, the Administration will continue to adopt positive encouragement measures, such as giving recognition to good employers, sharing of good practices and providing incentive and assistance to employers.
The Administration has reservations on introducing a statutory or mandatory quota system for employment of people with disabilities for Hong Kong as a whole. It also has reservations on introducing a policy requiring every Government department to employ a prescribed ratio of people with disabilities. According to studies by the European Commission in 2000 and the International Labour Organisation in 2003, such a system has not been successful overseas in helping persons with disabilities secure employment. Some countries have indeed abolished their quota systems. To promote the employment of people with disabilities, the international trend is to focus on the enactment and enforcement of anti-discrimination legislation and the provision of incentives for employers and enhanced support measures for people with disabilities. Moreover, under a mandatory employment quota system, people with disabilities could be perceived as a liability by employers and co-workers. This may not be conducive to their integration into the community.
With regard to part (b) of the question, the number of Government employees with disabilities in the past three years (Note 1) is set out below:
No. of
No. of employees with
civil servants disabilities on
with non-civil service
Year disabilities terms
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2008 3,225 287
2009 3,238 266
2010 3,316 281
A breakdown of these Government employees by departments is set out in Annexes A and B.
Note 1: Employees with colour blindness or defective colour perception are not included in the statistics.
Ends/Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Issued at HKT 15:32
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