Job fair offers employment opportunities for people with disabilities

AMMAN — A job fair to secure employment for people with disabilities opened in the capital on Monday with 50 companies offering 200 vacancies, the organisers said. 

Yousef Shamoun, the CEO of Akhtaboot, the event’s organiser, told The Jordan Times that it is the culmination of a six-week awareness campaign to advocate people’s right to work.

In cooperation with the Higher Council for the Affairs of Persons with Disabilities (HCD), the two-day event aims to empower people with disabilities by giving them an opportunity to increase their participation in the workforce, the organisers said.

The employers are offering vacancies in fields such as IT, banking, engineering and telecoms for those who hold university degrees and others, said Haitham Sqour, the coordinator of the HCD’s training and employment unit. 

The fair and the campaign followed a study conducted by the HCD, in cooperation with the Department of Statistics, which estimated that about 13 per cent of Jordanians are with disabilities, and around 10 per cent of those of them over 18 are unemployed.

Sqour told The Jordan Times that the HCD provided Akhtaboot with a database of 46,000 persons with disabilities, and telecom operator Umniah, helped deliver messages announcing the event to the targeted group.  

Rania, a fresh nursing graduate from the University of Jordan, came to the fair looking for a job. She suffers congenital malformation in the spine, but it does not affect her life.

Rania said she has just been laid off after a month of working for a private hospital, noting that although she received a 92 per cent assessment, the employers said the decision was taken because they discovered her disability. 

“I reported it in my job application,” she told The Jordan Times . 

Jack Tadrous, a visitor of the fair trained in graphic design, has been unemployed for five years. He said he came with hopes to find a job.

The HCD has held workshops for the companies taking part in the event on how to deal with people with physical disabilities, according to Sqour.

The fair is held at Al Hussein Youth City’s Amman Grand Hall, from 9am to 6pm.