The national action plan for 2017 for implementing the National Employment Strategy for 2017-2021 was approved with delay by the Government, only on July 24, 2017. This fact caused difficulties in the planning of activities and in the achievement of the results expected at the local level. At the same time, the plan’s activities do not contain indicators that would address the disability, shows a plan monitoring report compiled by the Alliance of Organizations for Persons with Disabilities of the Republic of Moldova. The monitoring authors, who focused on the inclusion of persons with disabilities, said the authorities should create equal opportunities for the professional development and employment of persons with disabilities and should ensure better collection of data concerning this group in the process of implementing the strategy, IPN reports.
The national action plan for 2017 for implementing the National Employment Strategy contains 69 measures. As the plan does not include actions that refer exclusively to persons with disabilities, the Alliance of Organizations for Persons with Disabilities chose to monitor 16 measures it considered relevant as regards the inclusion of persons with disabilities.
After assessing the implementation of each monitored measure, the authors established that many of the activities weren’t carried out as planned. Almost half of the 16 monitored measures weren’t implemented in 2017 and, even if steps were taken in this regard, the planned indicators weren’t achieved. This way the authors reached the conclusion that 36% of the indicators were achieved, 11% are being implemented as planned, 14% are being implemented with delay and 39% weren’t implemented as planned or the expected result wasn’t achieved.
The national action plan for 2017 does not estimate a total budget for implementing the measures on approval and contains no data about the fulfilled budget at the end of the implementation year.
The monitoring authors said the progress indictors do not show targets that are to be achieved annually to ensure the implementation of the measures aimed at facilitating the employment of persons with disabilities. The lack of targets hamper the assessment of the implementation level of the set objectives and their impact. In the absence of costs and targets, a number of measures cannot produce the expected changes.
The non-collection of disaggregated data according to disability and specific measures intended for persons with disabilities in the process of implementing the National Employment Strategy for 2017-2021 can diminish the impact of the strategy on this group.
To ensure the right to work of persons with disabilities by diversifying the services and extending the personalized employment packages for vulnerable groups and to implement the National Employment Strategy and ensure the efficiency of actions at the local level, the report authors recommend the Ministry of Health, Labor and Social protection to approve annual action plans for implementing the strategy at the start of each implementation year so as to make sure the measures are implemented in due time.
