Pilot transferring of jobless from one region to another

A pilot program to transfer unemployed workers to areas they are needed during winter will be introduced by DYPA, the Greek employment agency, Labor and Social Insurance Minister Adonis Georgiadis said on Open TV on Monday.

As he explained, “we have a great shortage of workers in the primary sector on Crete – they cannot find laborers – while we have regions in Greece that register very high unemployment, such as Western Macedonia. Thus, we shall set up a pilot program for [produce] collection in October-November on Crete, and DYPA will cover the cost of travel and housing for workers from Western Macedonia.”

Georgiadis added, “We will then see if this works out, if in other words we can transport workers from an area with high unemployment to another with high labor demand, for a limited time and with subsidies. If the system works, we will then expand it to the entire country.”

Asked about labor that is underreported or uninsured, he asserted that checks have reduced unregistered work “to a great degree,” since such employers are fined €10,500 per laborer.

“Our greatest issue now is not working under the table and without insurance, but underreporting” of the actual hours employers use workers, he said.