Government efforts to integrate people with mental and physical handicaps into the regular workforce are proceeding so slowly there should be a rethink, the government’s most senior advisory board said on Tuesday.

Since January 2015, the government has been phasing out sheltered employment schemes on the basis of an agreement with private and public sector employers to replace them with regular jobs.

By the end of last year, 1,600 jobs should have been created but the total had reached just 162 by the end of February this year, the Sociaal-Economische Raad (SER) said. In addition, sheltered workplaces are being closed down too quickly and hundreds of people are falling through the net.

‘We have to do all we can to catch up,’ SER chairman Mariëtte Hamer said in a statement.