Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture Elsie Ao Ieong U said that a new integrated service centre for persons with disabilities in Ilha Verde district will open this month, providing people with intellectual disabilities and autism with services such as work ability assessment, career planning, sheltered work training and on-the-job employment support.
Ao Ieong made the remarks while responding to an oral interpellation during a plenary session in the Legislative Assembly (AL) yesterday, adding that there are currently eight vocational rehabilitation service facilities in Macau, providing about 550 service places.
Ao Ieong recalled that when she was the director of the Identification Services Bureau (DSI), she had employed the hearing impaired to handle files and the physically disabled to do scanning work. The policy secretary said she believed that as long as the working environment was suitable, government entities would be willing to employ people with disabilities.
The government will optimise the allocation of resources for occupational therapy and physiotherapy-related services for students with special education needs, Ao Ieong promised, adding that in the 2022/2023 school year, the university admission rate of secondary school graduates with special education needs exceeded 85 percent.
The carers & the disabled
More than 260 carers’ families have benefited from the government’s allowance scheme for such households, and the total subsidies disbursed amounted to 12.68 million patacas, Ao Ieong said, covering bedridden, persons with intellectual, autistic and physical disabilities of any degree, and those who are unable to sit or stand on their own, as well as low-income carer families who are of the greatest concern to the community and who have to rely on the long-term and intensive care by others to take care of their own needs.
Ao Ieong noted that apart from a waiting list for long-term care and rehabilitation homes for the elderly, there was no shortfall in the supply of short-term or occasional care services, and two additional elderly homes would be set up in the future in the Eastern District 2 in New Urban Zone A, which were planned to provide about 1,000 bed spaces.
Ao Ieong noted that 99 percent of pensioners have no need to apply for financial assistance from the Social Welfare Bureau (IAS) after receiving social security benefits, leaving less than one percent in need of financial help. She said this showed that the existing social security system is functioning effectively.
Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture Elsie Ao Ieong U looks on during yesterday’s oral interpellation session in the legislature’s hemicycle. – Photo courtesy of TDM
