Praha - The range of works that Czech employment agencies will be allowed to hire workers for is to shrink considerably.
"Practically speaking, the agencies will be allowed to hire only qualified workers and workers who will have passed a school-leaving exam," Labor Minister Petr Nečas, the author of the proposal, told Aktuálně.cz.
"We are talking about rare qualified posts in the machinery or construction industry. There is a whole lot of them," he added.
The measures proposed by Nečas aim to solve the uneasy situation with jobless foreigners who got stranded in the Czech Republic as a consequence of the economic crunch.
Furthermore, it is to make it more difficult for employment agencies that had abused the system and hired unqualified (foreign) workers in the past. The Czech police is said to have focused on these agencies lately.
"With the recent massive redundancies we pay more attention to the organized crime in the migration field," Police's Organized Crime Unit spokesperson Pavel Hanták told Aktuálně.cz.
The end of March is expected to see around 12,000 unemployed foreigners in the country, out of which 7,000 will have been employed via work agencies.
Within the following 6 months, 68,000 foreigners will have been without the work permit. A number of them are expected to stay in the Czech Republic with neither work nor sufficient savings.
In January this year the Czech government has decided to help the jobless workers by paying for tickets to those who decide to go back to their homelands, adding eur 500 as a bonus. Only a handful of foreigners have used this opportunity so far.
Migrants will be needed
Having one of the slowest demographic growths in Europe, foreign workers will be increasingly in demand, according to minister Nečas.
"Until 2030 the 25-64 years-old category will decline by 750,000 people," Nečas said recently at an EU presidency related conference.
The gap could be filled with foreigners, according to the labor minister. But experts argue that governments and employers will have to adopt new integration programs.
They also say that the numbers of the unemployed will continue to grow. The January 6.8 percent unemployment rate is higher than the worst forecast.
Among the worst hit are the towns of Most, Karviná, Jeseník, Znojmo, Bruntál, Děčín and Hodonín. Prague-east and Prague-west regions have the lowest unemployment rate - 2.2 percent.
