The legislation on the professional rehabilitation and employment of disabled people, which went into force on 1 January 2015, envisages that employers with more than 20 persons on the payroll are obliged to hire disabled workers or to meet alternative quotas, that is other measures, including the payment of contributions to the Professional Rehabilitation Fund. The Fund is intended to improve the status of disabled persons.
According to the report compiled by Ombudswoman Anka Slosnjak, of 8,530 employers subject to the obligation to hire disabled persons, some 2,500 were those in the public sector and nearly 6,000 in the private sector.
As many as 1,576 employers in the public sector failed to meet the law-defined obligation regarding this matter, according to Slosnjak's report.
Although it was not consistently implemented, the legislation nonetheless helped to improve the employment of disabled workers, resulting in a 40% increase year on year, with 2,613 disabled persons getting jobs in 2015.
A total of 11,822 disabled Croatians were employed at the end of 2015, a 16 percent rise from 2014.
Also, some 7,300 disabled persons were registered as job-seekers at the end of 2015, a record high number in the last 10 years.