Nezavisne novine: The Center for pre-qualification and hiring unemployed persons, which is being opened by the Sarajevo Developmental Agency (SERDA), begins to work in the middle of May. It is expected that the pre-qualification, qualification and different kinds of trainings will be passed by 1.500 persons from the area of Sarajevo macro-region per year.
Slaviša Ćeranić, leader of this project in SERDA, says that all services of this center will be free, and the target group will mostly be young people up to the age of 35, unemployed for a long time, as well as dismissed workers with inadequate skills and knowledge. Other unemployed will not be left without this possibility either.
Internships for pre-qualifications
Out of 36 unemployed, who have recently (after pre-qualification) received the knowledge of commercialist and manager of key buyers, already three of them is employed, and it is expected that the other ones are also going to get hired, Slaviša Ćeranić has said.
"The plan is to organize for them internships and volunteering, which will last three months and we expect that it will start in a month. We will co-finance it. They will be receiving certain remunerations per month, but it is important that they gain practical experience by imposing themselves to the employer", he has explained.
For this project, which has been initiated last year, 44 of the unemployed have registered, while 36 of them have finished the training successfully.
"We work on this project in cooperation with the Spanish agency for international cooperation. It is absurd that the foreign donors are interested in developing our labor market, while our institutions, which should be doing it, do not do much on developing it", Ćeranić has said.
Besides the pre-qualification for deficit professions, center will also have the trainings of English language and informatics, organize internships and volunteering, inform the unemployed on free vacancies and connect them with employers, and advise them on interviews and drafting biographies.
"Nobody can overtake the role of the employment bureau, but the space for certain services for the unemployed has shown up. I do not know if it is because of non-functioning of the employment bureau. It should be worked actively with the unemployed", Ćeranić has said.
Safudin Čengić, chairman of the Employment Association of canton Sarajevo and member of the Assembly of the Economy Chamber of canton Sarajevo, supports the activities on training needed for market, but thinks that the case of unemployed people remaining at the employment bureau would be wasting money. He reminds that, independently on economic crisis, some branches have a need for professional qualifications.
"The most tragic is that where we have the most trained qualifications, in construction and metal industry, are the first ones hit by crisis and there are not many companies in BiH, which need that kind of qualification. But, qualifications are needed for companies, which deal with information technologies, small and middle companies need a higher-professional qualification in the area of planning, insurance, and banking. Recession has mostly hit those with the high-school qualification and higher education qualification. There is a problem of how to pre-qualify those into the higher-professional qualifications", Čengić has pointed out.