Amarjit

Amarjit takes the plunge.

Amarjit Sembi's new career as an aquarium technician at Aquamacs in Birmingham is going swimmingly thanks to a little support from Remploy's city centre recruitment branch.

Amarjit, from Handsworth, is profoundly deaf and having been made redundant from his previous warehousing job struggled to find fulfilling employment. A visit to his local Jobcentre Plus put him in touch with Remploy, who worked to increase his confidence, put together a CV, and identify the vacancy at Aquamacs' new division in Camp Hill.

"It was very hard to find work and it really started to stretch my patience," said Amarjit. "Luckily, once I went to the Remploy branch things started to change. My employment advisor arranged a signer, we discussed what roles I was interested in, and they helped me search through newspapers and apply for roles."

Amarjit now maintains, repairs and installs aquariums at businesses, conference centres and hospitals across the UK, regularly travelling to London, Bedford, Oxford and sites across the Midlands. He's part of just a three-man-team working alongside technical consultant Dave Fraser.

Dave, who is planning to start British Sign Language courses shortly, said: "I wasn't at all daunted by working with a deaf person and it's been great to see how interested our customers are in communicating - just learning simple signs like 'hello' or 'thank you'.

"It can be a very technical role but Amarjit has real skills and is now sufficiently trained to work independently, which is a real asset in a division of our size."