Over 10,000 disabled persons will be employed by over 6,600 enterprises thanks to wage credits in 2022. According to Eric Chua, Singapore’s Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Social and Family Development, nearly 2,000 of them had not been employed for six months.
Furthermore, the Enabling Employment Credit, which began in 2021 and will remain until 2025, offers up to 20% wage support, with a cap of SGD $400 (USD $291.12) per impaired worker per month that earns less than SGD $4,000 (USD $2911.20) per month.
Employers will receive an additional 20% in pay offsets for hiring disabled workers with less than six months of experience, up to a maximum of $400 per employee per month for the first nine months.
Next, the Enabling Employment Credit aims to persuade more companies to hire people with disabilities who have been out of work for a long time and are more likely to be financially dependent on their family.
Chua also emphasised that the 2014-founded Open Door Programme, which enables disabled workers to receive up to a year’s worth of personalised employment support from trained job coaches as well as discounted training sessions offered by the Enabling Academy.
According to Chua, over 380 job and training opportunities have been filled under these two programmes since they were introduced in 2021, and between 2020 and 2022, SG Enable, a Singapore agency that advocates for people with disabilities, and its partners assisted an average of 500 disabled people annually in finding employment.
According to him, the average resident employment rate for challenged workers aged 15 to 64 increased significantly from 28.2% in 2018 and 2019 to 31.4% in 2021 and 2022, moving Singapore closer to its goal of employing 40% of the impaired population by 2030.
