Rabat – Fadoua Lamrani was elated when she was hired as a waitress at a restaurant in Morocco which employs people with mental disabilities. “I was very happy when I was called to work here” in 2016, Lamrani told AFP. Before then she had been spending her days at home.
The 33-year-old is among some 60 people with mental health conditions working at the eatery located on a farm in Sale, a city near Morocco’s capital Rabat, run by the Center for Integration and Help through Work (CIAT).
Funded by both public and private partners, CIAT aims to overcome social and cultural constraints to help people with disabilities into jobs they would usually find hard to obtain, Said Beqqal, head of the program, told AFP.
While some of the workers in the restaurant in Sale cook and work the tables, others attend to the field where the vegetables are grown or look after livestock with the help of supervisors.
Morocco’s Mohammed VI National Centre for People with Disabilities (CNMH) initiated in 2010 a program to assist people with mental disabilities, who are most affected by unemployment. The center provides training in the hospitality, retail and agriculture sectors for people with disabilities.
Working on the farm, 31-year-old Imad Moufid said that he has learnt to “grow all types of vegetables or fruits”. After an apprenticeship in agriculture and poultry farming at the CNMH, he can now financially help his mother, he said.
People with disabilities and jobs
The unemployment rate among people with disabilities in Morocco was near 48% in 2014, the latest publicly available figures from the national disability survey. A client who was enjoying a meal at the Sale restaurant said, “we came here because it’s nice, and also because it’s good to take part in initiatives like this one”.
In Temara, a city south of the capital, CIAT already manages another restaurant employing people with disabilities. Additionally, it has been participating in job fairs and other public events to “spotlight” its employees, Beqqal said. Yet these efforts “remain insufficient to meet the needs of people with mental disabilities nationwide”, Beqqal added.
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Translated by Guilherme Miranda
