Vice President Explains 5 Government’s Steps in Fulfilling Basic Rights for Persons with Disabilities

JAKARTA (3 December 2019) – The Government had identified the problem which been faced by persons with disabilities around the country. The Vice President KH Ma’ruf Amin explained about 5 steps which the been taken by the government on persons with disabilities’ empowerment.

“The government keeps working on improving the access towards basic service such as education, health, and work opportunity for persons with disabilities. This is being done to ensures the basic rights fulfillment and also the dignity and independence improvement on persons with disabilities,” said the Vice President on his speech in the Commemoration Event of International Disability Day (HDI) on 2019 in Jakarta, Tuesday (03/12/2019).

According to him, although the poverty rate kept decreasing, but the amount of people in the vulnerable category was big. “This vulnerable group has a chance to fall below the poverty line,” he said. The cause could be from many things including the limited opportunity and access toward basic service such as education, health and basic infrastructure.

“Unfortunately, our brothers and sister who identified as persons with disabilities is included inside this vulnerable category,” he said. Quoted from the National Socio-Economy Survey data from Statistics Indonesia on 2018, in total of 9-12% of Indonesian People experienced the medium and heavy level of disability. “Prevalence of disability is on every age group, however the most of all is on the elderly age group,” the Vice President added.

The second step was that the government had to make improvement related to the regulation on persons with disabilities, including to arrange the Government Regulation as implementing regulation of the Law No. 88 of 2016 on Persons with Disabilities.

“Inside, there are chapters on rights of work, entrepreneurship, and cooperation without discrimination. Persons with disabilities has right to receive the same salary as the non-person with disability worker on the same type of work and responsibility, receives proper accommodation on the work, not dismissed because of the disability reason, and receives program to regain a work,” the Vice President said.

To ensure the presence of access toward basic service and social protection for persons with disabilities, it needed the cooperation between the local and central government. “in regional level, several provinces is preparing and pushes the issuance of regulation which focused on Convention of Rights for Persons with Disabilities,” he said.

The third step was strengthening the coordination and synchronization on cross-ministerial and institutional program, and strive on the local government’s incentive which created inclusive regional development.

The fourth step was that the government kept working on sensitivity, understanding, educating and behavior improvement of many stakeholders towards persons with disabilities through many comprehensive public campaign strategies to reduce the stigma, and also to include inclusive education material in the study.

No less important, to improve the policy quality to support rights for persons with disabilities fulfillment, the government had refined the data collection method using the data collection instrument which followed the Washington Group Question on Disability. “The data collection refinement is hoped to help the program development of service provision and evaluation, and also hoped to appraise the equality on opportunity for persons with disabilities,” the Vice President said.

On the same opportunity, the Social Affairs Minister Juliari P. Batubara underlined the Vice President’s statement, which said that the government kept pushing persons with disabilities to actively became the agent of change.

“We will not get tired to convey that the disability issue is a multisector issue and need our attention. The government cannot do this by themselves. It needs cooperation between central and local government, businesses, disability organization, and public element,” said the Minister.

To implemented the Law No.8/2016, the Minister said, it needed many derivative regulations from many fields. For example, Governmental Regulation on judicial planning, education, employment, social rehabilitation, and public service.

The commemoration of International Disability Day 2019 moment, the Minister said, was one of the efforts by the government to persuade, push, and adjoin between all of the stakeholder to realize Indonesia inclusive for disability. “Disability has potency and skill, and also contribute to support the government community’s dream to become Indonesia onward,” said the Minister.

Both the Vice President and the Social Affairs Minister motivated all persons with disabilities around the country. That they could become stronger, better, and more capable in every aspect than the public thought. “Hard work and great will without despair can destroy the barrier and change the public perception towards persons with disabilities,” said the Minister.

The Minister of Children Protection and Women Empowerment Gusti Ayu Bintang Darmavati Puspayoga, the representatives official for the related ministry and institution, the representative of Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises Agency, businesses representative, and disability organization or community were attended on the event.

The Secretary General Hartono Laras, Director General of Social Rehabilitation Edi Suharto, Director General of Social Empowerment Pepen Nazaruddin, Director General of Social Protection and Security Harry Hikmat, Director General of Poverty Reduction Andi ZA Dulung, Head of Social Education, Research and Empowerment Agency Syahabuddin, Senior Advisor of Social Accessibility for Minister Sonny W. Manalu, Advisor of Dharma Wanita Grace Batubara and several Echelon II officials with the functional officials of the MoSA.

Acting Head of Public Relations Bureau
The Indonesian Ministry of Social Affairs
Sonny W Manalu