site.btaOver 30% of Key Cadres in Bulgaria's Machine Building, Electrical Engineering Are at Retirement Age

Sofia, April 30 (BTA) - Bulgaria's machine building and electrical engineering are highly competitive on the international markets and mark a serious growth. However, over 30 per cent of their key cadres are at a retirement age, Vassil Velev, head of the Governing Board of the Bulgarian Industrial Capital Association (BICA), said at the opening of a roundtable here on Monday. The forum was aimed at discussing beginner motivational packages for supporting the career orientation in professions that are experiencing a deficit on today's labour market, the BICA said in a press release.

Unless urgent measures are taken (immediate import of human resources, reform of the education system in the middle term, and management of the demographic crisis in the long term), the production and business will shrink to the level of the human resources available, which would further limit the budget's opportunities for an increase of pensions and incomes in the budget sphere, Velev said.

At the roundtable, representatives of employers from the BICA, trade unions from the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria and the Podkrepa Confederation of Labour, and experts from the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy, the Ministry of Education and Science, the National Employment Agency, and the National Agency for Vocational Education and Training discussed ways to increase the attractiveness of professions already identified as key in the following four pilot branches: Machine Building and Metalworking, Electrical Engineering and Electronics, Transport and Spedition, and Medicine and Services for Beauty and Health.

The participants in the roundtable listed as key factors influencing the attractiveness of these professions and employees' motivation the flexible working hours, the convenient distance to the workplace, the salary, the professional training offered, how current the profession is, the working conditions, the stability and security of the employment, the profession's social prestige, and other factors.

Monday's discussion will be used in the elaboration of programmes and materials for distance learning, as well as policies and instruments for balancing the labour market.