The Beijing municipal government will give 220 million yuan (US$32 million) annually in the next three years to more than 56,000 disabled residents to help them find jobs and develop careers, the local disabled people's federation said yesterday.

"Disabled people wanting to start their own businesses will also get up to 20,000 yuan in subsidies, according to the scale of their enterprise," said Hou Shufen, the federation's deputy director.

According to the federation, Beijing has about 1 million disabled people.

Businesses in the capital will receive 3,000 yuan for every disabled employee who signs a one-year contract and 5,000 yuan each for disabled workers hired on an open-ended contract, Hou said.

If a company has a workforce of disabled people comprising more than 1.7 percent of its total employees, it will get 6,000 yuan for every disabled employee.

More than 16,400 companies in the capital are covered by the new policy.

Many companies applauded the new policy, saying it served as a "guideline" for hiring in the future.

"We will try our best to cooperate with the government to provide more positions for the disabled," a worker surnamed Jiang at FUJITSU said yesterday.

More than 50 staffer of its 20,000-strong workforce in Beijing are people with disabilities.

Guo Song, human resources manager for Beijing McDonald's Food Co Ltd, told China Daily that the new policy will enhance the company's confidence in hiring disabled people from now on and they will "definitely employ more".

McDonald's in Beijing has hired more than 80 disabled people, most of whom are hearing-impaired or suffer from mild mental disability, in its 97 branches.

Xia Xueluan, a sociologist with Peking University, told China Daily yesterday that job training, social insurance and service systems were also important to help disabled people adjust to society.

(China Daily April 1, 2009)