2024-09-02 17:05:34
Will importing workers from third countries solve unemployment problems in our country and is there anyone to work?
These topics were discussed on TV by Todor Kapitanov, vice-president of the KNSB and Dobromir Ivanov, executive director of the Bulgarian Entrepreneur Association.
“When we look at the good practices around us, there it is always a question of a mix. It cannot be done only with its own population. Low-qualified personnel are coming to Bulgaria, and this is good, because it is good for us that our Bulgarians work in more highly qualified positions, and the other is covered by people who want to work here on low terms,” commented Ivanov.
He said that these people from India, Uzbekistan, etc. who come find a place in manufacturing, in agriculture, in construction.
“By coming, they are valuable because they open up many other, better positions that can be taken by our fellow Bulgarians,” Ivanov added.
According to Kapitanov, the statistic that there are 153,000 unemployed in our country did not correspond to the truth, because there are many who neither work nor study and they are not even registered.
“There are workers and employees on the Bulgarian market. The question is whether they are looking for a job or whether they find one that suits them purely economically,” he said.
He asked why we import labor from third countries and not from France, Belgium, Germany. According to him, our Bulgarians went there.
“The staffing problem until years ago was one of the problems, now it is number 1. It is also a problem for the workers themselves, because the work does not decrease, but increases and must be performed by a capacity of fewer people. That is, people perform more than one position, they work overtime and all this fatigue that accumulates, stress, leads to illnesses, and this is not financially supported”, commented Kapitanov.
According to Ivanov, there should be an online system to search for people from third countries and it should be launched by the e-Ministry, not where they have been looking for staff for months.
“In a country that cannot keep its own employees, expecting that this deficit will be filled with personnel from abroad, there is no way it can be done. Importing people from third countries to our country is not the solution. Unregulated imports imply risks for Bulgarian companies and for the society. We from KNSB want to guarantee that the workers who come will be able to apply work under certain conditions and there is no way that this will affect the pay of the Bulgarian employee”, explained the vice president of KNSB.