Preferential Trade Terms for Disabled

Ayday Tokunova visited a factory making cotton sheets which now has just 66 employees instead of the 300 it once had. But more than 40 of the current staff are disabled, reflecting efforts by associations like the Society for the Deaf to provide jobs in manufacturing.



The society has ten firms employing 800 people, and its head Khalyk Mambetakhunov says that in the past they failed to win government contracts – he suspects this was because the deals had already been sewn up in advance.



The new law means the government will buy goods produced by disabled people without requiring them to submit a bid for the contract.



Mambetakhunov complains that a number of unscrupulous firms have in the past sold goods fraudulently marked as having been produced by disabled people.