RM1.2 billion allocated for persons with disabilities

The government will continue attending to the welfare of persons with disabilities by allocating RM1.2 billion for this group through Budget 2023, Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz said today.

He said this allocation would provide aid for the care of those with chronic diseases and allowances for those who are unable to work as well as disabled workers.

"The government will also be implementing initiatives to hone the potential and skills of persons with disabilities towards looking after their own economy," he said when tabling the Supply Bill 2023 in the Dewan Rakyat.

"In encouraging more persons with disabilities to go into business, the government will continue to boost the 1 PwD 1 Business Scheme through exemption of the business registration and licence renewal fees under the Companies Commission of Malaysia.

"Besides this, the government has allocated RM10 million to provide travel vouchers for persons with disabilities through the e-hailing service so as to ease mobility for this group.
 
"In protecting the welfare of special education children and their teachers, RM20 million has been allocated to provide teaching devices and improve facilities at schools for special needs students," he said.

Zafrul said the government had also provided a special incentive for the establishment of 50 new kindergartens for children with disabilities compared to the existing 13 to enable parents to send their special needs children to safe schools.

"The finance ministry will also initiate the setting up of a friendly call centre for persons with disabilities by using the video call mode together with the services of sign language interpreters to convey messages to these children," he said.

He also noted that there were now 260,000 persons with disabilities eligible for Bantuan Keluarga Malaysia or Malaysian Family Aid.