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China's disabled see mixed job fortunes in 2008

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-01-13 10:36

About 331,000 disabled Chinese in the urban areas found jobs in 2008, bringing the total to 4.67 million, but the number employed in rural areas saw a marked drop, statistics from the China Disabled Persons' Federation show.

The number of employed disabled people in rural areas fell by almost 930,000 to 16.04 million in 2008, said Wang Xinxian, secretary of the China Disabled Persons' Federation Committee of the Communist Party of China.

Wang was addressing a national work conference in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, Monday. Wang did not explain the contrast at the conference.

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With the help of government and non-governmental programs, 6,193 disabled applicants were admitted into colleges and universities last year, and 675,000 received job training, federation figures showed.

Almost 102,000 homes of poverty-stricken disabled people in rural areas were renovated last year and about 3.17 million disabled people came under social insurance programs that included pension schemes, medical, unemployment and industrial accident insurance, the figures showed.

Wang said the priority this year was to speed up the building of social security and service systems for the disabled, especially for those in rural areas.

The federation would endeavor to improve education and living standards for China's 83 million disabled, who account for 6.34 percent of total population.

The federation jointly launched a three-year project with the Ministry of Science and Technology on Monday to invest 150 million yuan ($21.94 million) to develop technologies and products that may facilitate information access for the disabled.