EFC to train more visually impaired in Vavuniya

The Employers’ Federation of Ceylon (EFC) on August 2 will return to Vavuniya to commence another 6 month IT training program for 8 visually impaired persons.

The course which is funded by the ILO-LEED program, will be conducted at the recently refurbished ORHAN Training Centre by EFC employee Ms. Manique Guneratne, who herself is visually impaired. Ms. Guneratne is a qualified ITC trainer and has successfully conducted many IT courses for the blind at the EFC’s purpose-built training centre in Colombo.  

The 8 trainees were selected from 15 candidates who responded to adverts in the press or were recommended by NGO’s and Social Services Offices working in the North. The trainees will be given food and lodgings at the newly upgraded ORHAN centre for the period of their training. All course material will be presented in Tamil and the EFC have recruited a translator for the full duration of the program.

Last year the EFC successfully completed its first training program for five visually impaired persons in Vavuniya. Keen to ensure that their new IT skills were put to good use, the EFC then conducted a small job fair and invited representatives from Hatton National Bank, Commercial Bank, People’s Bank, Bank of Ceylon, National Savings Bank, Cargills (Ceylon) PLC and Singer (Sri Lanka) PLC, to conduct interviews with the candidates with a view to offering them a 3-6month paid internship.

World Bank statistics state that 5% of the world’s population is disabled and only half of this demographic is gainfully employed. The UN’s Special Rapporteur on Disability states that there is a direct correlation between armed conflict and disability, and just a few minutes of conflict in an area can take up to 10 years and several millions of dollars to restore. The report goes on to cite war and conflict as the primary causes of disability in the world. Training programs such as this go a long way to regenerating an area ravaged by war and helps to restore a person’s dignity and value as contributing member of their community.