The funding for the Regional Employment Plan for the Azores for the period 2010 -2015, published in the Official Journal on Monday, will reach 325 million Euros.
During this period, the Government intends to comprise 150,000 Azoreans from different social classes, professional and age groups, including 115,000 workers, 8,000 unemployed, 7,000 inactive people and 20,000 youngsters and students.
In order to finance this plan, the Azorean Government will allocate 188 million Euros from Pro-Emprego and the remaining funds will be assured by the budget of the Regional Employment Fund (65 million Euros), the Regional Directorate for Labour, Vocational Training and Consumer Defence (30 million Euros), the Regional Directorate for Education and Training (15 million Euros), the Regional Directorate for Support to the Investment and Competitiveness and Pro-Convergence (20 million Euros), and by the Regional Directorate for Science, Technology and Infrastructures (7 million Euros).
Given that the current situation in the national and international context “is not favourable to economic activity,” the plan includes “a package of temporary and exceptional measures to strengthen the ability of organisations and people to face their greater fragility in this context.”
The Government aims to comprise over 3,000 unemployed in biennium 2010-2011, thus “greatly reducing the number of unemployed people without financial resources and professional qualifications in order to alter the current context at the time of economic recovery.”
During this period the Government also intends to “place a significant number of unemployed in professional training courses, preferably with dual certification (professional and academic) as well as some unemployed in occupational programmes.”
Moreover, the plan aims to “take action among the unemployed by monitoring their pathways into employment, drafting Personal Employment Plans through the improvement of qualifications for a greater employability, particularly through the “Reactivar” programme or programmes to mitigate the social effects of unemployment.”
With the development of this plan, the Government intends that the Public Employment Services “provide a response to the registered unemployed within 100 days.”
The “creation of conditions to implement a strategic awareness for the issues of employment and professional qualification, particularly in the necessary information to take into account in control of illegal and precarious work” is another goal set by the Regional Employment Programme.