Opinion

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Right question

Wednesday 29 August 2007

Will the Wajong become the new WAO? That is the question - baffling for outsiders - being asked in the Dutch media today. The Wajong is the name for the welfare benefit system for young handicapped people who are partially or wholly unable to hold down a job. The WAO is the general work disability benefit system.

The WAO spiralled out of control in the 1980s as employers and employees abused the system extensively – at one point an absurdly large section of the workforce in the Netherlands was disabled.

Now the spotlight is on the Wajong: the number of recipients is growing rapidly and there are stories of whole class loads of handicapped teenagers being dumped in the system once they leave school. Just as employers used to dump workers in the WAO as a sort of redundancy package.

However the comparison is unfair. The Wajong is a midget compared to the lumbering elephant of the WAO. And the reason for the increase in recipients is largely technical. Local councils are moving handicapped people out of the social security system and into Wajong so that the state has to foot the bill.

The real question here is why can't funds be redirected into subsidised employment? Most handicapped people want to work. And why isn't the government making it easier for employers to take on such workers? Perhaps because, according to one expert, an employer has to go through 19 separate processes to do this!

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