The Council of Ministers has approved this Tuesday a specific employment plan for Andalusia endowed with 50 million euros that will be used to hire unemployed people in the community and to contribute to the maintenance and sustainability of jobs.
In the conference after the Council of Ministers, the second vice president and labor minister, Yolanda Díaz, blamed the Andalusian government for the “enormous delay” with which the plan has been approved and has stated that the cause has been the “deficient execution ” that the Andalusian autonomous community carries out in terms of employment.
“Despite the permanent requirements, they sent us the documentation last week. These delays are only against an autonomous community that, as you know, is the second most unemployed in our country,” stressed Díaz, who He added that one of the main objectives of the plan is to improve the employability of young workers.
The Junta de Andalucía defends itself against these accusations. Thus, the Andalusian Minister of Employment, Business and Self-Employment, Rocío Blanco, has defended that the department she directs carries out a “correct” execution of the public funds it receives from one or another source of financing.
In addition, when asked by the media about the accusation of Yolanda Díaz, the Andalusian official argued that she could not “answer that question” from the lectern of said institutional press conference.
In any case, she has added that, as a director, she can maintain that “we execute all the money that comes from any source of financing, both from sectoral conferences and from European funds”, as well as “when the source of financing It is owned, it is self-financed”.
Thus, Rocío Blanco has concluded by defending that on the part of the Employment Council “we are very careful to use public money well, correctly and on time”.
As explained by the Ministry of Labor in a note, the employment plan will be borne by the budget of the Public State Employment Service (SEPE) and the 50 million euros must be allocated to the execution of measures that allow increasing employment during the period of execution of the plan, which may be extended during 2024 and which will be reflected in an agreement between the Public State Employment Service and the autonomous community of Andalusia.
As the note from the Ministry of Labor recalls, one in four unemployed in Spain resides in this region (25.3%), which in data from the end of 2022 represented a total of 764,900 people, the lowest number of unemployed since the year 2008.
However, the unemployment rate in Andalusia stands at 19%, that is, 6.1 points above the national average.
“Andalusia had a total of 3,261,200 employed people at the end of 2022, setting a historical record at the end of the year. In absolute terms, employment increased by 11,400 people, barely 0.4% more. It is, therefore, of a rate of growth well below 1.4% of the national total”, concludes the ministry.
