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Survey targets disabled employment

Employment for the nation's physically and mentally challenged residents remains far from ideal, although improvements have been made in the areas of health coverage and education, a survey showed.

The results of a survey released on Friday conducted by academics at the commission of the Ministry of the Interior in October last year showed that the unemployment rate among physically and mentally challenged citizens stands at more than 10 percent, or about three times the national average.

The results of the survey were released by Wang Kuo-yu (王國羽), a professor at National Chung Cheng University's Department of Social Welfare.

Wang said employment has not significantly improved for the physically and mentally challenged in recent years despite government programs offering subsidies and job training programs.

He attributed the lack of progress to several factors, including an unwillingness among employers in established industries to hire disabled job seekers, difficult economic times, a lack of facilities for handicapped people and other structural problems.

Despite the lack of progress in finding employment opportunities, Wang said advances have been made in other areas, including health coverage and education.

For example, he said, all of Taiwan's 960,000 physically and mentally challenged people are now covered by the national health insurance system. The figure stood at just 92 percent in 2002.

In the area of education, government programs over the past decade have also significantly increased the number of physically and mentally challenged individuals entering college or university, Wang said.

He acknowledged, however, there was still room for improvement in education, with the survey showing that only 30 percent of mentally and physically challenged people in Taiwan have a high school diploma and their illiteracy rate is around 25 percent.

The average income of households with physically and mentally challenged members is also lower than the national average and about 30 percent of these families do not make enough money to cover their basic living expenses.

Only about 20,000 of the country's disabled citizens have an income above minimum wage, the survey found, indicating that many must rely on their families to make ends meet.
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