Employers paid fines of nearly €2.5 million in three years for failing to meet the quota of workers with a disability, data tabled in Parliament shows.

Education Minister Evarist Bartolo said JobsPlus had collected the amount between 2015-2017 from companies having more than 20 staff on the books but failed to engage the minimum two per cent quota of employees with a disability. The majority of the companies were in the wholesale and retail trade and vehicle repair sectors, Mr Bartolo said in response to a question by Nationalist Party MP Ivan Bartolo earlier this week.

Oliver Scicluna, the Commissioner for the Rights of People with Disability, told the Times of Malta the figures showed that enforcement of the quota was being taken seriously and that the situation was improving. Nevertheless, he pointed out, there was still plenty of room for improvement.

“The system seems to be working but perhaps it is not working for everyone,” Mr Scicluna remarked.

Enforcement was being taken seriously

He said there were still people, particularly those with intellectual disabilities, struggling to find employment. The question was whether employers had the necessary training and support to employ such people, he commented.

Read: Workers with a disability triple over two years

There were 288 people with a disability registering for work as of January this year, according to JobsPlus figures, down from more than 400 a year earlier.

Mr Scicluna said research into issues facing employers seeking to employ people with a disability was lacking. Though employment figures were important, sometimes they glossed over the problems people might face in the workplace, he went on.

“The number of reports we receive over issues like workplace discrimination and accessibility have actually increased but, in a sense, this is positive because it shows there are more people in employment and more awareness of the issues,” he said.

Since 2015, employers must make an ‘annual contribution’ of €2,400 per person below the quota, capped at €10,000 per employer.

Those employing people with a disability are exempt from paying the employer’s share of social security contributions for such employees and could also be eligible to claim a fiscal incentive equivalent to 25 per cent of the disabled person’s basic wage, up to a maximum of €4,500.

The funds are used to support the work of the Lino Spiteri Foundation, a public-social partnership between JobsPlus and Empower that seeks to create employment opportunities for people with disability and support them on the workplace.

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