The Government announces a public administration scholarship for disabled university students. The program serving the ends of equality aims to see young people accumulate employment experience in ministries and through that have an opportunity to access permanent employment. The details of the programme were announced by Monika Balatoni, Minister of State of the Ministry of Public Administration and Justice stated at her press conference in Budapest this Friday.

The background institution of the Ministry, the Office of Public Administration and Justice (KIH for short in Hungarian) will open the tender for applications on 20th January that will be available until 7th February. he program is planned to start in March. Those who will be granted with the scholarship could work four hours per day for three months at a ministry and will receive a tax-free stipendium fee of 50,000 HUF per month.

To oversee the work of the selected twenty disabled person, mentors will be chosen among state officers of different ministries and they will also receive 50,000 HUF. She added, if a lot of people submit their applications, then the government will consider raising the number of eligibilities. The Minister of State said, they already started to put together workstations for the disadvantaged students, such as a voiceover program helping participants with seeing difficulties.

Monika Balatoni introduced another governmental program for helping disabled people as well. In February the undergraduate course of one- stop shop assistants in public services at the National University of Public Service will include an „empathy course” which will assist emotional accessibility beside physical accessibility.

Parliamentary representative Gergely Tapolczai of governing party FIDESZ living with hearing disability stated (with assistance by a sign language interpreter) that he considers the initiation of the program historical and greets the initiative in the name of the governing parties, which will open new barriers for young disabled people to work in public administration. During the Gyurcsány-administration, these doors were locked for disabled people, even people without disadvantages found it quite hard to get into public administration.

Referring to gaining experience, he noted the current government emphasises the importance of learning and working. He said that the positive model of the government should be followed by others in the labour market, because according to his experiences, most employers are afraid of employing disabled people. In accordance with the detailed matter, the representative emphasized „mental and spiritual accessibility” along with the importance of shaping consciousness.

Both agreed that client-oriented public administration means not only rapid reaction and kindness of administrators, but that clients start off with equal chances to solve their problems at the one-stop shop public services. Both the scholarship program and the empathy course have been supervised by three disabled young professionals.

(Ministry of Public Administration and Justice)