Fadoua Lamrani was elated when she was hired as a waitress at a restaurant in Morocco which employs people with disabilities. The 33-year-old is among some 60 people with health conditions working at the eatery located on a farm and run by the Centre for Integration and Help through Work (CIAT). “I was very happy when I was called to work here” in 2016, said Lamrani as she readied for the usual lunch service at the restaurant in Sale, a city near the capital Rabat.
Before then, she said, “I had been spending my days at home”. Funded by both public and private partners, CIAT aims to overcome social and cultural constraints to help people with disabilities into jobs they would usually find hard to obtain, Said Beqqal, head of the program, told AFP. Employers tend to be “afraid of hiring people with disabilities and of not knowing how to manage such situations”, Beqqal added.
While some of the workers in Sale cook and work the tables, others attend to the field where the vegetables are grown or look after livestock with the help of supervisors. The unemployment rate among people with disabilities in the North African country was near 48 percent in 2014, the latest publicly available figures from the national disability survey. The Mohammed VI National Centre for People with Disabilities (CNMH) initiated in 2010 a program to assist people with disabilities, who are most affected by unemployment.
The center provides training in the hospitality, retail and agriculture s.
