Disabled face a job crisis in the post-Covid world

Rizwan Safi, 24, gets distressed every time his wife asks him about when he is returning to work. Safi, had joined an auto parts company in September 2019 and his parents arranged his marriage soon after.

In March last year, during the lockdown, his factory shut temporarily and Safi, who earned ₹9,000 a month, lost his job. “ My wife seems to feel that she and her family was cheated into marriage, which is devastating for me. They feel I never had a job in the first place,” says Safi, who is visually challenged.

“My supervisor at the factory kept promising me that I would be called back soon, but that has not happened. Everyone else, except three totally blind people like me, have been called back to work. A blind person depends on physical touch, which is a taboo in these times of social distancing. I think it is the need for social distancing that has cost me my job,” adds a distraught Safi.

Safi is not the only one.

“ Almost half of the 200 people with disabilities I found placements for over the past few years lost their jobs or have been furloughed. Covid 19- is particularly harsh on the blind. These days employees have so many questions and apprehensions about hiring the blind, fearing they would not be able to maintain social distancing. My job as a placement person has never been so difficult in the past decade,” says Tejinder Singh Bisht, who helped place Safi and heads placement division at Blind Relief Association, a Delhi- based non-government organisation, which works for the empowerment of the blind people.

People with disabilities—physically disabled, blind, the deaf -- have been disproportionately affected by the economic consequences of the Covid crisis, with thousands of them losing their jobs or being furloughed. They say even before the pandemic, disability-inclusive work culture was a mirage for them and they were hired mostly with a sense of charity. Covid- 19, they feel, has changed even that consideration on the part of companies, creating an unprecedented job crisis for them. And non-government organizations who provide them vocational training and find placement for them say finding jobs for them — most work in hospitality, retail, finance, BPO — has never been harder.

Life for people with disabilities who lost their jobs has been a daily struggle.

Take, for example, Shayam Sunder, 43, who is deaf. Sunder, who lives in Dwarka and worked as a linen and uniform attendant in a five-star hotel in Delhi, earned ₹11,000 a month before he was furloughed during the lockdown. He has since been desperately trying to find a job, but to no avail. “It was always difficult for a disabled person like me to find a job. The hospitality sector is hit hard, and since I am just class 10 pass, I am not sure if I will find employment in the near future. I have so far survived on my meagre savings and on support being provided by relatives. The feeling of being a burden on others is stifling, ” says Sunder, talking to HT through a sign language interpreter.

“People with disabilities, who mostly have entry-level jobs in different sectors, have suffered massive job losses during the Covid -19 crisis. Many of them are the only bread earners in their families. The emotional cost of being unemployed is high as a lot of them are considered a burden by their own families,” says Arman Ali, executive director, National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP), a cross-disability, non-profit organization that works with industry and government for the empowerment of people with disabilities.

The problem , Ali adds, is that barring a few exceptions, most companies continue to consider employment for disable as part of their CSR activity and not their HR practice. “The pandemic has made it necessary that employment for people with disabilities is rethought. They should be part of the companies’ business plans and seen as drivers of profitability,” says Ali.

According to World Bank data, India has 40 to 80 million people with disabilities. The 2011 census pegged this figure at 26.8 million, with the National Capital Territory of Delhi accounting for 2.34 lakh, a number disputed by disability rights activists, who say that the actual figure is much higher.

While there is no data available about how many disabled people lost their jobs during the Covid-19 crisis, NCPEDP conducted a study during the lockdown—‘Locked Down and Left Behind’-- to assess the condition of people with disabilities across the country. Out of 1,067 who were surveyed, 57% said they were facing an employment-related financial crisis, 13% spoke of challenges in accessing rations, while 9% were facing obstacles in access to health care and medical aid.

Praveen Jindal, a resident of Vishwas Nagar in Delhi, who has a disability in one leg says that every month he faces threat of eviction from his house by his landlord. His only income right now, he says, is ₹2500 that he gets as disability pension from the government. Until the lockdown, he worked with an agency that collected credit card payments for a bank. “My landlord has raised my rent from ₹4,000 to 6, 000 a month, which I just cannot afford to pay. For a few months, I survived with support from family and friends. Eventually, I had to sell my two-wheeler to survive,” says Jindal.

Top e-commerce companies, says Ramya Miryala, the director of Deaf Enabled Foundation, an organization which helps train and find placement for people with hearing impairment across the country, have been the only ray of hope in the otherwise grim employment scene. “At least 220 people out of 750 we trained and found employment before the pandemic lost their jobs . In the 11 years that we have been working for the deaf, we have never seen so many people lose their jobs. Thankfully, we were able to place some of them with e-commerce companies where they are into loading, unloading and packing-tagging,” says Miryala. “The hearing impaired succeed very well in jobs where they do not have to take instruction and work is visual, but our placement numbers have decreased by 50% last year,” says Ruma Roka, founder Noida Deaf Society.

AS Narayanan, president , National Association of the Deaf (NAD), says it will be difficult for a deaf to regain their jobs as a majority of them worked in the hospitality sector which was hit hard by the pandemic.

“All the hotels are quite conscious of their social responsibility. The problem is they are working at reduced staff strength and are gradually calling back staff on a need basis, including people with disabilities, most of whom worked in spas, housekeeping and service departments. One needs to understand that many areas of hotels are still closed,” says KB Kachru, vice president, Hotel Association of India and chairman emeritus & principal advisor, South Asia, at Radisson Hotel Group.

Arman Ali, whose organization is currently working with IIM (Bangalore) to understand the challenges and gaps in creating employment opportunities for the people with disabilities in the post-Covid world, however, sounds hopeful. “ The job scenario for people with disabilities will improve as new norms of work from home might eventually help them. In fact, people with disabilities have been demanding work from home and flexibility in work for years,” says Ali.