LabMin Vasilescu: Romania faces labour shortages in constructions, IT, agriculture and health

The sectors where Romania faces the greatest labour shortages are constructions, the IT sector, agriculture and health, Labour Minister Lia Olguta Vasilescu told a press conference on this issue on Monday. 

"We advertise vacancies for medical doctors, of 10 position, one or two filled. In exchange, for ten positions for nurses, there are 100 applicants," the Minister showed, reminding that according to the Pay Law, the medical doctors' salaries will reach 3000 euro in March. 

Minister Vasilescu also pointed out that there are issues as regards the IT sector. 

"If tomorrow we had 12,000 IT graduates, we would see they would immediately be absorbed into the labour market," she underscored. 

"Constructions and agriculture are the most challenged. The irony is that most people who have left the country are working in these fields in the EU. We are not feeling this loss in constructions as yet, but we will feel it next year, when the PNDL [Local Development National Programme - ed.n.] programme will become operational, through which many schools, kindergartens, the sewer system, the drinking water system and others will be built, especially in the rural area, over 30 billion lei, and with this money the mayors will have to achieve their objectives, but the companies will have to find the necessary workforce," the Labour Minister further maintained. 

"I ask the business milieu to take the European money Romania has at its disposal. They give this money for the employees' papers but they can add one hundred, two, three hundred lei, so that they are not left with the minimum wage level, but make it bigger so that we keep our workforce in Romania and prevent them from emigrating," the government official said. 

The Labour Minister also added that information is circulating in the public sphere according to which there are 6 million welfare beneficiaries in Romania, which couldn't be further from the truth, only if all children who benefit from allowances were included here, but they cannot be considered as people who should work but are not willing to. 

"Based on 416 [the guaranteed minimum wage law - ed.n.] we currently have 240,000 families with children. This is the real figure. We have realised, still based on statistics, that we are already talking about third generation unemployed people. Certainly, these are not unemployed, but people who never wanted to work, and within their families, the fact that their children might find a workplace was never on the table. We do have this kind of situation, but in other EU countries there are people who refuse to work and a cult of non-work settled in their family, unfortunately," she affirmed. 

The Minister further said that there is a bill in Parliament which foresees that a person who has turned down a job will no longer receive social security or unemployment benefit. The bill was initiated by the opposition, and the Labour Ministry's task will be to watch over what happens to that respective family, as the children are not guilty if their father refuses to work, she completed. AGERPRES .