Disabled enabled by PR(2)

Enabling the disabled

According to Yu, about 70 percent of the 2,000 contractors working with her company are disabled. A female employee from the China Disabled Persons' Federation (CDPF) told the Global Times Tuesday that currently it has no statistics on how many disabled people are doing online PR work.

Yu said she once was offered a massive contract worth 300,000 yuan to design a computer program, but nobody on her staff was qualified to carry out the project.

On Wuhan-based website bangcn.com, which provides working opportunities for its 16,000 disabled members, publishing a post can earn between 0.2 yuan to 5 yuan, and writing a PR story can earn more than 100 yuan, according to Yuan Yonghai, the founder of the website. Yuan himself is disabled and unable to walk due to a polio infection.

Payment from clients is split, with 80 percent going to the member of the site, and 20 percent going to Yuan for website maintenance, Yuan told the Global Times. When these members find clients they can receive a 20 percent commission and finding new members earns a 2 percent commission.

On the other hand, as a boss, Zhang sometimes has to make tough decisions. She once fired a disabled person because he couldn't meet the client's requirements.

"It was hard for me to make the decision. But if an employee is not responsible for his work and can't put his feet in other people's shoes, our clients will have bad impression of disabled people. As a result, more people will lose their jobs just because of one person," she said.

 Even though Yu is cautious, she has encountered several incidents where her clients suddenly went bankrupt and couldn't make their payments. In such circumstances, she has to use an emergency fund she set aside to pay the workers. "I can't have them work for nothing," Yu said.

Yu, Yuan and Zhang all said that they never stoop to attacking other products or publish false information, as they don't want to damage the reputation of disabled people.

Still marginalized

In 2010, the CDPF and the China Association of Persons with Physical Disability launched a training program across 10 cities, which included online marketing and writing PR articles. This year, the program will cover the whole country, the Phoenix Weekly reported in June.

However, working at home should be the last choice for the disabled, said Yu Fangqiang, director of Just For All, an NGO based in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, which specializes in protecting the rights of the disabled.

"The disabled should integrate into society and work with other people. Working at home will restrict them from encountering the real world," Yu said. "But, currently, there aren't enough facilities or jobs for the disabled."

Online PR work should be encouraged for the disabled, as it highlights their strengths, but it is not likely to be the centerpiece of any policy moves, an insider who works closely with policies for disabled people told the Global Times, adding that policies should aim to increase employment of disabled people and eliminating discrimination.

The percentage of disabled people should not be lower than 1.5 percent of the total number of employees of an organization, according to a regulation on the employment of the disabled, released by the State Council and implemented in 2007. The target has not yet been reached.

About 32 million out of 85.02 million disabled people in China are of working age, according to 2011 statistics, but only 33 percent of them can find jobs in urban areas and 50 percent in rural area, according to the Phoenix Weekly report.