The government is working on programs to encourage employers to employ people with disabilities.
This was emphasized by Tetyana Berezhna, the Deputy Minister of Economy of Ukraine during the round table “Employment of People with Disabilities: European Perspectives in Ukraine”.
“We work in 3 directions. The first is programs to encourage employers to employ people with disabilities. The second is that among persons with disabilities there are those who have an entrepreneurial flair, they need state support at the stage of developing their own idea. The third is people who want to retrain and need certain new skills,” said Tetyana Berezhna.
So, in order to encourage employers to employ people with disabilities, the government intends to increase the amount of compensation to employers for employing people with disabilities and to introduce compensation for arranging workplaces for them.
“Currently there is a program to stimulate employers. It provides for compensation of 50% of actual labor costs, but no more than UAH 6,709 per month. This compensation is hardly used, as it is only available to persons who are registered unemployed. And such people among all the unemployed are very few: in that year their share was only 5.7. Therefore, the Ministry has developed now a draft resolution, by which we propose to expand the range of programs for employers to integrate into the labor market not only the officially unemployed persons with disabilities.”
In particular, it is planned to compensate the costs of setting up a workplace for persons with the I and II groups of disabilities.
“We have worked out a procedure that suggests setting up such workplaces for persons with disabilities of the first and second groups in sufficiently high amounts so that it can really be an adaptation that will bring benefits. That is, we have 15 levels of the minimum wage for persons with disabilities of the 1st group, which is slightly more than UAH 100,000, and 10 levels of the minimum wage for persons with disabilities of the 2nd group,” says the Deputy Minister of Economy of Ukraine.
How it will happen: the employer adapts the workplace, bears certain costs for it, brings payment documents to the state employment service, if they meet those requirements, then he receives compensation for the arrangement.
“This is an opportunity that we create so that people with disabilities can show all their talents and capabilities in the workplace, no matter what. This is actually an opportunity to show your capabilities thanks to such adaptations,” she said.
It is planned to launch a program for compensation of actual expenses for wages, taxes and single social contribution. This is similar to the existing one, but already in the amount of UAH 15,000.
“Talking with employers, we realized that they need it. We are talking about the amount of UAH 15,000 for 6 months, which includes the costs of wages, taxes and social security,” says Berezhna.
The deputy minister also emphasized that a grant program for veterans and persons with disabilities is already in place.
“There is an opportunity to take a grant to start or develop your own business. A grant in the amount of UAH 250,000 can be received by a person with a disability as a result of the war. A grant of UAH 1 million can be received by a person with a disability as a result of the war who has been registered as an individual entrepreneur for the last 3 years. We have the funds for this. Therefore, we hope that the program will be used.”
The publication was made within the framework of the MATRA Program with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Ukraine. The opinions expressed by authors belong to them only and should not be construed as reflecting the official position of the Embassy.
