By Joe Chivers,

THOUSANDS of young unemployed people in Axarquia are soon to be working thanks to the Junta’s new scheme.

The Emple@Joven programme, aimed to help unemployed people under 30, is set to give 1132 young people work.

This demographic is one of the worst hit by the current economic crisis and Spain’s crushing unemployment rates.

The scheme aims to help find young people short-term jobs, if they have been unable to find work themselves, giving them a job, training and experience.

As part of the programme, Axarquia has been allocated a €4.7 million investment. The work given to the youths is primarily related to community services, such as cleaning, environmental protection, maintenance work and waste management.

Other jobs available include the promotion of sports, tourism, culture and local products.

In Torrox, 109 youths were hired, with jobs ranging from builders, to sports instructors to gardeners.

The Junta’s delegate in Malaga, Ruiz Espejo, called the programme ‘pioneering’, saying that it ‘supports youth employment and aims to give them opportunities to access the job market’.

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10 COMMENTS

  1. I note that 80% of the funding for these projects comes from Brussels. Which means indirectly the British are paying for the scheme!

    There is a similar one in Marbella which employs around 200 cleaning streets etc. also EU funded.

  2. It’s a worthwhile project, but a €4.7 million investment is such a pitifully small amount. To think how many hundreds of millions of euros have been embezzled, it could have transformed the regions. Spain’s political system has ruined an entire generation.

  3. Give it a couple of years and no doubt we will be reading a story about this a s some sort of scandal / corruption case.
    I was reading the printed edition of The Olive Press this morning and on the back page there is a small mention of how 17million of EU money goes to supporting the bull fighting industry !!!!! More of that please

  4. Nothing the Junta does has any credibility. If they are not creaming off EU funds, they are spending public money on demolishing, or attempting to demolish, more properties which are usually owned by foreigners.

    If they actually did something useful and spent their time wisely by doing things like encouraging inward investment and reforming the property laws, wealthy northern Europeans would have the confidence to invest their money in the region which would create new businesses, jobs and growth naturally. Not difficult is it? That said, it’s not likely to happen now.

  5. @derek
    Yes we are moaning at the past but a lot of the people involved in these scandals are still in positions of power. I appaud the fact that young people are getting jobs but E.U needs to look very closely at where the money is going.

  6. Ok. If the young are getting real training but usually what happens is they are filling in for Town Hall services like street sweeping. The one just started in Marbella (funded 80% by EU) provides 6 months work for each youth and all they seem to be doing.

  7. bryan is correct,

    the town halls used to get at least double of their allocated funding from the Junta before 2006, then they halved it, throwing all town halls into bankruptcy as they were barely managing to pay their electricity bills resulting in may a village running their public swimming pools of generators as they owed 100’s of k’s in electricity bills. ( interesting how a municipality supposedly part of a country can be held to ransom by an energy company btw ),
    so ranting aside, the Junta takes half of the money designated for street cleaners, training course etc, an old scheme that has actually been in place for well over a decade, and then take funding from the eu to reinstate it in a heroic way. teh contracts will be pitifull and will be limited to a short term so as to not incur any permanent jobs, also when their 6 months is up ( mostly friends or cousins of whoever gets to choose who gets the jobs ), then their back on their arses. perhaps they should allow small businesses to flourish? not just try an dtax an dfine everybody to death. No business equals no jobs, high taxes means no investors, they keep on like this and the black econonomy here will so vast they may as well consider it a tax haven. which would at least bring in investors.

  8. Marbella and other Towns have been doing this for years, both in Summer and Off Season. Maybe thinks it’s a “pioneering effort” because he just discovered these EU grants are available!But why waste all these taxpayer funds giving short term, menial jobs,leading nowhere to the young?Use some funds to get experienced businessmen to help the unemployed look for & set up startup companies providing real jobs for themselves and others which lead somewhere in the future!?Some successful businessmen might even volunteer to do this Real Apprenticeship jobs where part pay is made from the Grant funds. Solving this problem MUST involve experienced businessmen not just Politicos

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