KUALA LUMPUR, March 20 – As of January 31, 2024, there are 756,681 persons with disabilities (OKU) registered with the Social Welfare Department (JKM), according to Minister of Women, Family and Community Development Nancy Shukri.
Selangor is the state with the highest number of registered disabled people at 128,401, followed by Johor with 86,966, and Perak with 65,127.
Labuan recorded the lowest number of registered disabled people at 2,462.
Nancy provided the figures in a written Dewan Negara reply on March 13 in response to Senator Isaiah Jacob, who asked for the number of registered disabled people (OKU) as of December 31, 2024 by state, category, gender, and race.
“According to categories, the highest number of persons with disabilities are registered as learning disabled with a total registration of 296,782 people, followed by physically disabled (253,510), visually disabled (63,524), mentally disabled (59,415), and hearing disabled (47,541),” Nancy said.
OKU with speech disabilities have the lowest number of registrations with a total of 3,958 people.
“Aside from that, there is one more disability category, which is multiple disability with 31,951 registered individuals,” the minister added.
“For your information, the multiple disability category refers to individuals who have more than one type of disability, and in general, is not suitable for classification under other categories of disability.”
Meanwhile, 65.7 per cent of registered disabled persons are men, in comparison to 34.3 per cent of women registered as disabled.
Men also outnumber women in all categories of disability.
Finally, Malay disabled people recorded the highest registration percentage of 61.3 per cent (463,532), followed by Chinese disabled people 17.5 per cent (132,119), Indian disabled people 9.0 per cent (68,445), Bumiputera ethnic group (Sabah) 3.4 per cent (25,456), Bumiputera (Sarawak) 1.8 per cent (13,989), Orang Asli ethnic group (Peninsular Malaysia) 0.7 per cent (5,282), and others 6.3 per cent (47,858).
