02.10.2023
IS THERE RESISTANCE IN OUR COUNTRY AGAINST RETRAINING?
About 37,000 Bulgarians have completed or are currently attending vocational qualification and retraining courses in the centers licensed by the National Agency for Vocational Education and Training.
About 1/3 of those visiting vocational training centers want to start their own business, says Luba Krasteva, chief expert at the National Agency for Vocational Education and Training.
The motivation of people of active age to retrain in order to keep their jobs is not enough, experts report.
"If we do not retrain, there is a risk of falling far behind, into the group of the permanently unemployed," warns Tsvetan Spasov, head of the OP "Development of Human Resources" at the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy.
A huge resource has been set aside for training in digital skills to catch up, leading to a slight rise in unemployment, he points out, giving the example of a group of 150,000 low-skilled people struggling to find work and having a long history of registration in the labor offices.
The national campaign "Time to update" in the summer has shown that technology has already entered our manufacturing enterprises.
Woodworking companies are no longer looking for carpenters, but programmers. In sugar factories, only 4-5 years ago, 16 people were required to work in 2 shifts to fold about 2,000 candy boxes, now one woman folds 24,000 boxes in 8 hours.
We are no longer in the years of classic professions that we work all our lives, Tsvetan Spasov also points out. According to him, until the Bulgarian does not understand that he must be flexible, whatever the administration does, it is difficult to change the statistics, which are not positive at the moment.
Things are not as bleak as they seem according to the statistics. Vocational training centers are already quite popular both among employers and non-governmental organizations, believes Antoaneta Katsarova, director of "Vocational Training" at the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce. According to her, Bulgarian workers and employees have enough opportunities to develop their skills.
Katsarova is adamant that with the introduction of robotization in production, unattractive labor will decrease, and by retraining, people will retain their ability to work servicing machines of a new generation.
"What will change is people becoming more highly skilled, not unemployed. These robots are created by people, people service them, people control these processes."
"There is a psychological barrier to be overcome in the entire population - it turns out that the more qualified a person is, the more he is qualified. Those who are not qualified have no desire. In the older generation there is a perception - I have studied, I have graduated, this is what I will be working on all my life. This is partly where the resistance to upgrade qualifications, to obtain a new one comes from. With the younger generation, this approach has been greatly changed," emphasizes Katsarova.
People, especially those with lower education, in villages, older people still do not believe that training and education make them more competitive in the labor market, commented Zornitsa Slavova from the Institute for Market Economy.
According to the National Employment Action Plan, training in digital skills is planned for half a million people - the most large-scale training in history, she notes.
There is still a huge shortage of suitable personnel. This is a major factor for employers not to expand their operations. They must train them, that is, education does not provide the necessary skills for a person to be directly employed, adds Slavova. "The employer must educate and train him."
