- Even persons with a disability have found it easier to find a job. Their employment was facilitated through fiscal incentives offered to employers and through the enforcement of a law enacted in 1969 to reserve 2% of the manpower of companies with more than twenty (20) employees to persons with a disability.
- At the same time, persons with disability in employment and earning more than the minimum wage have been given the right to retain their Disability Pension.
- The Disability Pension has been reformed primarily to assist persons who because of their disability could never be able to be gainfully occupied and supplement their pension with income from employment. These persons are entitled to the Increased Severe Disability Allowance which is equivalent to the annual net National Minimum Wage.
- The same reform removed the bar to a Disability Pension for persons who, although missing one arm or leg, were not considered eligible at law.
- Besides the Barthel Index, which applies to persons with mobility problems, an Impairment Rating Evaluation was introduced in 2019 to widen the eligibility parameters to other forms of severe disability.
- The eligibility criteria to qualify for Disability Assistance were broadened in 2020 to embrace persons who are medically certified to be permanently deaf or On reaching 16 years, beneficiaries of Disabled Child Allowance may become eligible to the Disability Assistance. .
- In 2021 persons certified to be severely disabled and intelluctually impaired and unable to take up a job became eligible to the Increased Severe Disability Allowance.
- The means test criteria to qualify for disability assistance was dropped in 2022.
- Physically disabled persons may be entitled to Severe Disability Assistance, Disability Assistance or Disablement Pension even if they engage in a gainful occupation. On their retirement they qualify to a contributory pension but forfeit their entitlement to the assistance or pension. As of 2025, they became entitled to a pension top-up to partly compensate for their loss of their disability benefit. The adjustment will align their pension with the national minimum wage, but in no case would such adjustment be lower than 10% of their respective benefit.
- A new tier was introduced in the disability framework in 2026for persons experiencing a level of non-functionality that is higher than low but still below moderate. Such persons will be entitled toa Disability Benefit at a rate set between 30% and 44% of Disability Assistance.
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