CRO LABOUR MINISTER:NATIONAL EMPLOYMENT PROGRAM TO BE DRAWN UP

STUBICKE TOPLICE, Jan 21 (Hina) - Labour and Social Welfare Minister Davorko Vidovic on Saturday announced that a draft national programme for employment would be finished in coming days and that this programme together with amendments to a labour act should help improve the situation in the field of employment. Croatia's peculiarity is different statistical data on the jobless. According to official figures, the jobless rate is 22.4 percent, whereas results of polls show 15.4 percent, Minister Vidovic told a workshop on this topic, held in the northern spa resort of Stubicke Toplice. Another specific feature is the fact that some 180,000 employed people have not been receiving salaries for some time, he added. Minister stressed that it was high time authorities took severe penalties against employers who hired workers but did not register them as their employees. Amendments to the labour act stipulate that it will be possible to ban the further activities of an employer who fails to pay salaries, as Croatia is faced with the practice that some have opened their firms to hire workers illegally and then sack them in a few months. Vidovic criticised this practice pinning the blame to the non- existence of penalties and fines for the grey market which tolerated the illicit work and black labour, but the entire system protected neither employers, nor workers or state. He added that in 2000 the cost of labour fell by five percent, but it had risen by 15 percent in the five previous years. (hina) ms