52-year-old Ashot Saribekyan can find neither a gardener job, nor a doorman job, not even a valet job. Ashot Saribekyan didn’t manage to find any job during a job fair organized in the Congress Hotel today either. According to him, “A few employers just took my phone number, but I have no hopes that I will get any job.” A. Saribekyan said during a conversation with www.aravot.am that he is ready to take any job, in order not to feel “worthless” and not to rely on 17-thousand-AMD pension, “He who does not work, neither shall he eat. The system should change. I can work as an assistant chef, but they wouldn’t employ me, but I am good at it; I cook almost everything myself at home.”
Armen Alaverdyan, the head of Unison, an NGO, expressed concern during a conversation with us that 90 percent of 100 thousand disabled people are unemployed today. In his words, “If we wait for the ideal country to be built, we will wait for a long time. That is the reason why one should take concrete steps, one of which is job fairs. The purpose of that fair is to create a model that if a disabled person has work potential, he will be offered equal opportunities to use that potential. Even if they don’t employ a disabled man today, they will be ready to do that at least in the future, when they will have respective vacancies. We invited employers who offer real jobs, and at least a part of them will be filled by disabled people. There are only few companies today that have disabled employees.”
Rita Harutyunyan, the head of the personnel department of a company Tosp, said during a conversation with www.aravot.am that they had a vacancy for women laborers, but not for disabled people in wheelchairs, since their workplace was not adapted to that. According to Ms. Harutyunyan, a few disabled women had already applied for the job.
Read also
There are also vacancies in Yerevan Regional State College No. 2. They have already given jobs to three disabled people. According to the head of the college’s personnel department, Ani Torosyan, “We don’t practice discrimination, if a person with his abilities is appropriate for that job, we employ that man. Our college is adapted to that; it has a wheelchair ramp, so a wheelchair user can enter. Admittedly, the school is not adapted, but we can adapt it; the State Employment Agency is implementing a respective program and will help us with that.”
Lusine BUDAGHYAN
