[Editorial] Accessible Working Environment for Disabled

The Disability Discrimination Act comes into force beginning Friday. The disabled visited the administration and the legislature, appealing for the necessity of the law, and their desperate efforts finally bore fruit. Followed by the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities at the U.N. General Assembly in 2006, the international community is moving to tackle rampant discrimination against the physically challenged, and a growing number of countries around the world are set to enact laws to prevent discrimination against the disabled. With the enforcement of the act that ensures the disabled employment and access to education and public facilities, the nation has become a more advanced country in terms of human rights.

There have been a couple of laws in place for the handicapped, including the Disabled Persons Welfare Act, the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Act, and the Vocational Rehabilitation of Disabled Persons Act. However, they haven’t been effective at all. The National Human Rights Commission of Korea has no shortage of complaints from the disabled, asking to address discriminatory acts against them.

Since the commission’s inauguration in 2001, it has received some 4,000 complaints as of the end of last year. Among them, 580 are about discrimination against disabled people. Though explicit discriminatory practices are on the decrease, implicit ones, such as limited access to transportation means and refusal to issue insurance and financial packages, are on the rise.

The business community argues that making the provision of facilities for the disabled mandatory and imposing punitive damages on companies for repetitive and intentional discriminations can hurt business activities. If companies are forced to fit with transport means, such as wheelchairs, for a small number of disabled workers, they might shun hiring the disabled altogether. The well-intentioned law may end up ill-serving those people the law is supposed to help, as is evidenced by the Temporary/Part-time Workers Protection Act, which was aimed at protecting non-regular workers but has resulted in the dismissal of them. To prevent this unanticipated result from happening, the government is advised to phase in the implementation of the law to lessen the burden of businesses.

That said, we should do our utmost to help the physically challenged do their roles in promoting economic growth. The purpose of the new law is to give fair opportunities to the disabled who have the same willingness to work and abilities as physically able people.

If private sectors avoid the employment of disabled people, the government will be more burdened due to a rise in the number of people who live on government support. We hope the enforcement of the law creates an atmosphere where the disabled contribute to the nation by working without obstacles and paying their fair share of taxes. A genuinely advanced country is the one that provides disabled people with an accessible working environment.