The number of individuals with disabilities in Indonesia is guite significant, namely 22.22 million people or 8.5 percent of the total population. Among this large number, there are people with moderate and severe disabilities who encounter barriers to being able to participate inciusively in society.
Data shows that people with disabilities in Indonesia are far behind when compared to non-disabled people in accessing many basic services. The rate of participation of persons with disabilities in education and employment, for example, is unegually low when compared to that of non-disabled people. This situation has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
If examined further, the cause of the low participation rate of persons with disabilities in various sectors of life is the lack of government support to support persons with disabilities so that they can live independently and participate in society in a meaningful way.
Unfortunately, the number and coverage of beneficiaries of social protection programs intended for persons with disabilities are still limited. Other social protection programs that are targeted more at poor households are also inaccessible to households with family members with disabilities, because the determination of the poverty threshold is based on low leveis of household consumption.
Households with family members with disabilities generally have extra costs to meet their needs, which is not the case for households without members with disabilities. As a result, households with members with disabilities are often not registered as poor households, causing them to be excluded from various social protection programs.
With this condition, the government needs to redesign comprehensive social protection programs for persons with disabilities. Several things that can be done to improve this condition are adjusting the existing programs to be more inclusive, and starting to develop benefit schemes specifically designed for persons with disabilities such as concessions, cash transfers, direct services, and other supporting programs while taking into account diverse forms of disability and gender.
The book is accessible on the following link :
File_Policy Paper on Social Protection for Persons with Disabilities: Overcoming Inequality to Create Independent Living