Nasscom plans to create 2,000 IT, BPO jobs for differently abled

Nasscom Foundation, the social development arm of IT-BPO association Nasscom, is spearheading a recruitment drive for people with disabilities. The objective is to create over 2,000 IT-BPO jobs for people with disabilities in the next two years.

Though corporates in general are still largely insensitive to the employment needs of the disabled, some are now recognizing the benefits of a diversity policy and are onboarding people with disabilities.

"India has 5.5 million disabled youth in the 12-24 years age group, yet only a few corporates have taken initiatives to create workplaces that recruit and welcome people with disabilities," said Rita Soni, CEO, Nasscom Foundation. "However, diversity is seen as a very strong business case to drive job creation for people with disabilities in India."

Right now the number of disabled people employed by the industry is very small, so small that nobody has found it worthwhile to collate the number.

Nasscom Foundation has a mandate to conduct job fairs for people with disabilities across six cities to start with. The job fair held recently in Mumbai attracted over 100 people with disabilities and dozens of corporates. A few dozen people were hired by leading IT-BPO companies in Bangalore as well. Similar job fairs are planned for Delhi and Hyderabad.

Soni said, "We will concentrate on six cities initially, and we will repeat job fairs in these cities to make it convenient to the disabled talent before we expand to other cities. It is about empowering the less powerful by giving them financial freedom and confidence. It is also about removing the embarrassment and giving them a better standing in society."

The fairs are conducted in association with the Vocational Rehabilitation Centre of various state governments and Wadhwani Foundation, the foundation established by billionaire Romesh Wadhwani.

After many years, an Indian, Javed Abedi of the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People, an NGO, is heading the global organization Disabled Peoples' International.

"This will also help people with disabilities in the country," Soni said.

Nasscom's HR Summit 2012 scheduled this week in Chennai will address issues like ensuring an innovative, inclusive and diverse workforce, improvement in accessibility and assistive devices for people with disabilities at the workplace, understanding of the untapped segment of people with disabilities and preparing HR managers towards finding, training and retaining people with disabilities.

It will also seek to demystify the myths around the advantages and drawbacks of hiring people with disabilities, and discuss how to train them.