Manama: Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti has rejected the practice by some companies of hiring people with disabilities, giving them salaries and exempting them from going to work.
“Such practices cannot be condoned or tolerated because they are a destruction of the intellectual abilities and cognitive skills of the people,” Shaikh Abdul Aziz Bin Abdullah Al Shaikh said.
“They have to work and to acquire experience and expertise. Giving them salaries and asking them not to report to work deprives them of acquiring knowledge and accumulating experiences and turns them into lazy and idle people,” the religious scholar said during a live radio talk programme.
Saudi Arabia has been encouraging companies to hire people with disabilities and special needs under various programmes to assist them.
Campaigns and workshops have been regularly held to raise public awareness about the significance of standing with the disabled and helping them feel genuinely integrated in the community.
Most social media users said they welcomed the Grand Mufti’s statement about their fictitious employment, but some argued that in some cases, there were no other options to help the disabled.
Abdul Lateef said that the Grand Mufti was “right in clearly stating what is tolerated and what is not tolerated from a religious perspective.”
“People are paid for the work they perform, and not just by signing up their names,” the office clerk, said. “We all want to help people with special needs, but they should at least put some of their cognitive or physical skills at work so that their money at the end of the month is halal. At the same time, they should accumulate experience through practice.”
Those who disagreed with the Grand Mufti said that people with special needs needed preferential treatment to help them ease into society with major difficulties.
“We should be really thankful to the companies for assisting people with special needs,” a user writing under the moniker of Nice Boy said, quoted by Saudi news site Sabq on Wednesday. “Their assistance whether the beneficiary goes to work or just receives cash is highly appreciated because some of them do need the money they get and cannot always perform. I hope the fatwa by the Grand Mufti would not make companies stop paying out to the disabled.”
