Ilze and Surisa give us a tour of the premises. We meet Christian, Ilze’s son, who is deaf. He is the resident computer whiz and, at this moment, is fixing something on his mother’s laptop. In a room down the corridor, several people are hard at work scanning barcodes from stacks of documents with an optical character reader. It’s a quiet repetitive process – pick up a thin sheaf of printed paper from a pile, place it under the reader, make sure the barcode has scanned and drop it on another pile. Again and again, the employees go through the cycle rhythmically. Ilze explains that they are scanning barcodes from contracts of cell phones that have been delivered. The work is there thanks to VodaCom, a large wireless provider. Every morning, VodaCom delivers a stack of contracts to be scanned; the next morning, the company’s agent picks it up.
Employment Solutions employs disabled people to do those jobs that cannot be easily mechanized in a factory environment. Typically, they are seen as labor-intensive chores. Yet these are often perfect for the disabled. In the case of the barcode scanners, they are all deaf. They would have found it difficult to work in a typical workplace, but here they function effectively.
In the next room, three more deaf employees are scanning documents for a company’s archives. Another is shredding them manually. The shredder has broken down, and there is no money to buy a new one. (Such is the reality of NGOs in South Africa today.)
We make our way to other rooms. The work spans a range of activities – and a range of disabilities. Some people are cutting and bundling galvanized pipes to specifications; others are making clamps for gutters; yet others are creating leather gear knob covers for cars. There is a wheelchair repair unit, a sewing unit, a pottery and crafts unit. One person is using a 30-year-old machine to make clamps for automobile silencers.
Everyone looks happy. They wave at us and say hello. They smile. They wave again. Isabel, one of the managers, makes her way around the factory floor in a motorized wheelchair, making sure everything is going all right. She comes over to introduce herself.
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Employees assembling gutter clamps at Employment Solutions for People with Disabilities in Pretoria, South Africa. Credit: Phillip Koening, SAP AG.
By Saswato Das, Director, Media Relations, SAP
(Did you miss part 1 of this series? “The Power Of South Africa’s PEN”.)
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