By Mohammad Izzat Muhamad Abdul Karim and Siti Syuhaidah Mohd Rahman
GOMBAK, 27 May 2021: Enabling Academy has provided ongoing support for PWDs in many areas including holding three months’ training for the candidates, provide recommendation to the companies, and even spread awareness to the companies in order to diminish the common stereotypes, a webinar was told recently.
Senior job coach from Yayasan Gamuda’s Enabling Academy, Syafika Pabir who had 10 years’ experience working with PWDs, was speaking at the webinar in conjunction to World Autism Month.
The webinar held on 23 April was addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 8 (SDG 8) to provide information to the society on job coaching for people with disabilities (PWDs).
She said: “We would encourage departments that wants to hire these individuals to attend our awareness session so everyone in the department would know how to support these individuals”.
She further explained that as a job coach, the academy would recommend the company to provide a consistent supervisor or “buddy” to supervise the candidates in the workplace and each job coach will usually communicate with the supervisor to talk about the candidates and evaluate them time by time.
“It is not only good transition for them especially at the early stage, but it is also good for us,” she explained.
However, Syafika Pabir emphasised that each candidate will be given the “ongoing support” differently according to their needs as each PWD has different behaviour and development.
She said: “Some of our graduates, once they are placed and we have done the awareness session, even though they have a buddy or supervisor, they are quite independent or they are capable to just have a good transition.”
Asked what kind of other training Enabling Academy provides for these young adults with autism for their employment she explained that their programmes were divided into two courses that focuses on personal development and job skills development.
Additionally, Syafika Pabir shared that COVID-19 has affected economic and employment growth including for PWDs.
She said: “As a job coach we do help them support their working from home rotation because working from home is a bit different and there are a lot of differences compared to working in an office.”
She also mentioned that Enabling Academy had given various support and recommended some programmes that the candidates can improve on their skills for those who are still waiting for a job.
Moreover, Syafika Pabir felt that the government’s affirmative policy for public agencies to employ at least one percent PWDs in their workforce may still be low.
“The one percent policy is not mandated so it is not a must and because of that, most government agencies have yet to achieve that one percent,” she said.
Enabling Academy managed to encourage about 30 companies where most of them are private companies and had trained about 63 participants, however, despite its benefits to hire PWDs in the workforce, employers still have low expectations of them.
The 45-minute webinar was organised by Professional Speech Communication class (COMM 3090).***