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OVR continues to help people with disabilities find and maintain jobs
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Posted on Dec 01 2005
The Office of Vocational Rehabilitation helped 32 persons with disabilities to obtain or maintain employment in fiscal year 2004, according to OVR’s annual report.
Twenty-six of these individuals had jobs at the time they started receiving OVR service. The other six were unemployment.
Now, they are earning hourly wage ranging from the CNMI minimum wage of $3.05, to $17.30. On an annual basis, the OVR clients are earning between $1,456 (for a part-time position with an 8-hour work week) and $35,984.
“[A]ll these individuals, with the help of the consumers themselves, their families, advocates, service providers, employers, vocational rehabilitation counselors, and the State Rehabilitation Council, were successful in maximizing their potential to either obtain or maintain employment in competitive and integrated work settings, became economically self-sufficient through work, and are now hard-working taxpaying members of our community,” said OVR director Felicitas P. Abraham.
The OVR report showed that 20 of the individuals were male and the 12 others.
There are 20 Chamorros. The rest are Caucasians, Carolinians, Filipinos, and Hispanic, and Pohnpeian in ethnicity.
Fourteen of the 32 employed OVR clients are high school graduates; six have special education, and five have a bachelor’s degree or higher. The others finished elementary, secondary, or vocational education, or had no formal schooling.
Nineteen are employed in the public sector in the areas of public administration, education, and service. The 13 others have jobs in the private sector, specifically in the service, professional, construction, retail trade, and wholesale trade industries.
According to the OVR report, 15 of the OVR clients have sensory or communicative impairments, which include blindness, deafness, and deaf-blindness.
Fifteen others are physically impaired. They may have orthopedic or neurological impairments, respiratory impairments, or general physical debilitation.
The two others have mental impairments, which include impairments involving learning, thinking, processing information, concentration, as well as interpersonal and behavioral impairments and difficulty coping.
