Fico: Slovakia Country with Acute Shortage of Skilled Labour

Bratislava, February 29 (TASR) - Slovakia is a country in which there is already an acute shortage of skilled labour, said Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer-SD) at a press conference following the government session in Kosice on Thursday. The session focused on the future of the automotive industry in Slovakia. "Slovakia's unemployment rate is below 4 percent, but a significant proportion of these people are long-term unemployed, without working habits and without discipline. It's very difficult to find enough skilled labour in this environment. We'll have to reach out to skilled workers from abroad," said Fico. "The problem we need to address in the next few months is to adapt the supply of what our schools produce to the needs of practice. We need to focus much more on professions that car companies will need in the future," stressed Fico. Another major problem, according to the premier, is the issue of environmental protection. "We are talking about electromobility, which will put enormous pressure on processes related to environmental protection. I think it was very welcome that we want to shorten periods in terms of environmental impact assessments," he said. "I can state that today we've approved the first comprehensive document - a government resolution containing a number of decisions, measures and proposals. This allows us to continue to elaborate it into an action plan and specific moves. The economy minister has been given a specific task - to meet representatives of car companies in March and go into even greater detail with them," explained Fico, adding that Labour Minister Erik Tomas (Voice-SD) has offered individual negotiations regarding the recruitment of labour. Fico at the same time warned that the question arises as to whether Slovakia will have enough electricity in view of a large-scale transition to electromobility. "We have some analyses of how much the transition to electromobility will impact the electricity grid. According to certain analyses, electricity consumption will increase by up to 83 percent by 2040, partly because of electromobility. So, we have to look at the quality of transmission networks or generation sources. It's obvious that we will go down the nuclear power route for electricity generation," added Fico. zel/df