Workers at the Commission for the Rights of Persons with Disability (CRPD) will enjoy better working conditions after a new collective agreement was signed on Wednesday.
The new agreement was negotiated between the Industrial Relations sector in the Office of the Prime Minister, the UHM – Voice of the Workers, and the CRPD leadership.
The new agreement includes a 2.5% increase in salary and will run until the end of 2026.
Workers will also have more flexibility at work, and a structure for workers to be incentivised to advance their career and skills is also being introduced.
The Inclusion Ministry said in a statement that the agreement builds on the CRPD’s strategy for the years between 2022 and 2024, which had identified capacity building within the entity as one of its key strategic aims.
The CRPD’s role as a regulator is to safeguard the rights and obligations of people with disability, in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (UNCRPD).
The CPRD employs 40 people, almost half of whom have a disability.
The signing of the agreement was presided over by Inclusion Minister Julia Farrugia Porteli and Permanent Secretary of the same ministry Nancy Caruana, and was signed by Acting CRPD Commissioner Rhoda Garland and UHM representative Isabelle Farrugia.
“A more flexible and dynamic Commission will have an effect on the whole disability sector. When we improve, as we are doing with this agreement, the conditions of our workers, we would be incentivising the sector and strengthening our work in favour of the rights of people with disabilities,” Farrugia Portelli said.
Garland said that the regulator needs to have “motivated and flexible” workers and that the new collective agreement will give the regulator all the tools it needs to work towards this aim.
Farrugia said that the UHM – Voice of the Workers welcomed the new collective agreement and augured that this will result in the sector continuing to advance and the rights of the disabled to continue to be strengthened.