ILO: PROJECT OF CLEANING DANUBE WOULD ACTIVATE 7 MILLION LOST JOBS

ZAGREB, Feb 7 (Hina) - Countries of South-East Europe must explain to the international community the importance of the Danube as a navigation route, which, once its 'cleaning' starts and normal river navigation is established, would activate about seven million jobs that went lost in the Danube River Basin countries, a representative of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said in Zagreb on Wednesday. Jean-Marie Standaert, a specialist on employers' associations at the ILO, participated in a conference of the South Eastern Europe Employers' Forum (SEEEF), held in Zagreb on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Zagreb meeting was part of preparations for a meeting within the Stability Pact, to be held in Budapest on February 19-20, focusing on an initiative for social cohesion in the Stability Pact countries. The Budapest meeting will be the last chance for the Stability Pact to become a serious project since it is politically incomprehensible that one should have to wait more than a year for its first results, he said. According to Standaert, if the Stability Pact really aspires toward stability, it must start from the creation of new jobs, which in the case at hand can be achieved quickly with a project of cleaning the Danube. Destroyed bridges should be removed, unimpeded traffic enabled, and new bridges built in the long run, Standaert said, adding the international community was not aware enough of the importance of the Danube for the overall economic revival of South- East Europe. Asked about the extremely high figure of seven million jobs, Standaert said those jobs went lost in the Danube River Basin countries over the past two years. According to forecasts based on studies by SEEEF experts, the opening of the navigation route would create a number of jobs for people who make their living of transport and activities related to shipbuilding and industry, which, especially in Romania and Bulgaria, were oriented toward the European market and are now incurring losses due to high transport costs, Standaert said. This would enable the employment of 1.5 million people in Romania and Yugoslavia each, about one million in Slovakia and Austria, about 700,000 in Bulgaria and Hungary and a smaller number of workers in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, he added. Attending the Zagreb meeting, the fourth of that kind, were employers from Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia, and, for the first time, from Yugoslavia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. (hina) rml