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Evaluation of employment opportunities for people with disabilities in Joe Gqabi District of the Eastern Cape

Even though the post-apartheid democratic government introduced a “social model” approach to address disability, there is still low employment rate of People with Disabilities. Government has enacted different legislation aimed at the inclusion of people with disabilities into the mainstream of society; however, the majority of people with disabilities are unemployed and often denied employment opportunities. The study seeks to evaluate employment of people with disabilities, identify challenges facing the government departments and local municipalities in employing people with disabilities, and to determine what measures can be taken to improve the employment of this group. A purposive sampling was used to select the government departments and the municipalities. A total of seven organisations, participated in the study consisting of four government departments and three local municipalities of the Joe Gabi District. During the interviews, a semi-structured interview guide was used to generate in-depth interpretation from the participants. The data was then analysed using quantitative methods such as graphs and tables and qualitative methods such as data coding through Tech's (1990) framework as described in (Creswell, 2003). The findings of the research revealed that government departments and municipalities still experience challenges in recruiting and providing employment opportunities to people with disabilities. There are a number of factors perceived by participants as challenges to low recruitment and employment of people with disabilities. These include: A lack of clear internal policies and guidelines at district levels of the government departments; Tendency by the government departments and municipalities to use the Employment Equity Plans only as a tool for compliance with legislation; A lack of effective recruitment strategies especially for people with disabilities. The participants also suggested a number of ways to improve employment and recruitment of people with disabilities, which include partnering with relevant organisations that could help in providing work-seekers who are persons with disability, developing effective internal recruitment strategies, HR managers to be trained in disability management and all relevant legislation and finally departments to fund posts specifically for people with disabilities.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:9122
Date January 2013
CreatorsGiwu, Pumeza
PublisherNelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis, Masters, MA
Formatv, 51 leaves, pdf
RightsNelson Mandela Metropolitan University

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