Press release of the Minister of Social Welfare and Youth Blendi Klosi:

Decent work is a priority for the Albanian government in terms of employment.

The program of the government has put into focus employment and the quality development of decent work, in accordance with the vision and directives of the EU, the European employment strategy, as well as the requirements for Albania’s European integration.

This is showed also by the level of funds made available for this program, which have multiplied compared with just 2 years ago.

Today, the Albanian government approved the program of the Employment Promotion Fund, which compared with 2013, that is to say with only two years ago, has increased fivefold. Of the 90 million in 2013, this year the fund is 490 million.

Thanks to these programs, our aim is to increase by seven times the number of employees compared with two years ago.

Groups that will be prioritized are the young, women, the Roma people, people with disabilities, orphans and other social groups who find it difficult to engage in the labour market.

Today, the Albanian government approved seven new programs to be implemented in 2016, to enable the employment of 10,000 unemployed workers, approximately 70% of which will be women, while 55% of the entire program will be young jobseekers.

The significant increase of the government’s attention to this program has resulted in the need to increase the transparency and efficiency of the mechanisms for its implementation.

The amendments adopted today in the package of this program package aim at increasing transparency, enhancing the efficiency of the funds used, as well as increasing the number of applying employers. In addition, the new projects require a much greater involvement of unemployed people. For these projects to be approved, a new assessment system is already operational, which will give as a result a greater number of applying jobseekers and employers.

The mechanisms will be:

– Maximize the number of unemployed workers who benefit from active labour market;

– Provide expertise and equal access to the selection process to all applying companies;

– Give priority to those enterprises that provide sustainable employment opportunities in priority economic sectors, and who might have a major impact on the social and economic life of the country.

In addition, today’s changes bring some innovations also for the group of beneficiaries in these programs, and provide a better targeting of young unemployed, in order to further meet the needs of the labour market today.

The focus and attention is placed on young people entering for the first time the labour market, and the young people who have just graduated, recognizing the difficulty they have in finding employment in the Albanian labour market. This will be done by promoting employment through an integrated program, by combining training, a 3-month working period, and by guaranteeing subsidized employment for a period of 9 months.

Subsidizing wage at a higher level than the minimum wage for the social and health insurance nationwide, make this an alternative scheme both for unemployed and for employers. At the same time, the extension of the employment contract to 15 months increases the probability of a sustainable employment for target groups.

In addition, changes aim at improving the targeting of unemployed women jobseekers, to better meet the needs of this social group, taking into account the demographic diversity and needs, defining as beneficiaries women who are heads of households and young mothers who have dependent children up to 18 years old, for we known the difficulties they have to find a decent job in labour market.

As far as this category is concerned, an increase by 115% of the subsidy of the minimum wage at the national level has been already proposed and already approved, thus providing a very good opportunity to this social group.

The new program for promoting employment for orphans was adopted today by the government, with an aim at supporting the category of young people under 30 who have the status of orphans and are registered at the job offices across the country. Therefore, on behalf of the Albanian government, I urge employers to participate and apply at our job offices for these employment programs.

I urge all unemployed jobseekers, especially girls and boys, women who are head of the household, and also the aforementioned social groups, to go to the job offices, apply and ask to be part of the employment promotion scheme. Go to the job offices and ask to be part of the Albanian labour market. Go to the job offices and, with the help of qualified employees of these offices, approach vocational education as the golden opportunity to be able to live in Albania with a decent employment.

Thank you!