The regional director for Employment and Vocational Training guaranteed, today, the non-existence, since 2000, of any “important fluctuation in the normality of the salaries payment” in the Azores.

In a press conference in Ponta Delgada, Rui Bettencourt quoted data of the Regional Inspectorate of Employment (IRT) to indicate that, in the first semester of 2008, there was only registered the occurrence of 62 cases of salaries in delay.

In 2007, the IRT effectuated a total of 118 countings of situations connected with salaries in delay, disrespect for collective conventions and payments with embezzlement, in the universe of the existent enterprises in the Azores, he added.

Rui Bettencourt told, also, that the number of unemployed people receded in the Region 13,7 percent in July, 11,7 percent in August and 11,9 percent in September.

He guaranteed, equally, that, with basis on the system of indicators of alert, in force in the archipelago since 1999, there was registered between 2000 and 2007 a normality in the salaries payment done in the Azores, in a percentage that varies between the 96 and 97 percent.

Taking into account the staff boards declared by the enterprises, the regional director for Employment and Vocational Training affirmed that the average profit of the salaries in 2006 in the Azores was of 808,21, rising, in 2007, for 863,89 euros, in other words, more 6,8 percent.

In this power, he stated that the Azores are 17 percent above the national average and far from the 629 euros spread by a national study carried out by sounding.

On the matter of job offers, Rui Bettencourt declared, still, to have been a significant increase in July (more 298,1 percent), August (more 158,3 percent) and September (more 106 percent) of this year.