France : More and better jobs for disabled people

Launched on last 30 may, Handicompétence aims to target the firms that employ few or none disabled workers, prefering to pay to the public agency ? Agefiph ? than to use available competences. In order to adjust to the special and evolving needs of enterprises, Agefiph is putting on the forefront the challenge to compete and to survive in the market economy with qualified workers. A training portfolio will be made available to all firms along with new financial packages (60 millions of euros in the two coming years) to ensure the operational implementation of the law passed last year on the rights of disabled people. According to the last figures provided by Agefiph, some 230 000 interventions in 2005 secured the work of 78 300 disabled workers and contributed to the training of 121 100 other workers. 27 300 lump sums have been attributed to compensate handicaps and 2 500 disabled entrepreneurs were coached by the Agency and its affiliates. The rate of unemployment of disabled people is roughly laggering at 20% while the national medium rate is lowering a little bit, but remains still high about 9, 3%. www.agefiph.fr