The State Employment Service of Ukraine has already employed 14,000 internally displaced persons (IDP) out of a total of 1.5 million, and another 1,500 will get jobs under the Employment Support Program of the UN Development Program (UNDP).
“We employed 14,000 internally displaced persons out of 56,000 people who asked for a job. All 56,000 IDPs were rendered career-guidance services, services to raise their level of skills, and professional retraining,” State Employment Service Head Yaroslav Kashuba said at a press conference hosted by Interfax-Ukraine on Sept. 7.
According to him, almost 1.5 million people have been registered as internally displaced people by the state social protection services, of whom 347,000 are capable of working.
As soon as a person is registered he/she will get a job, Kashuba said, adding that many IDPs are in a poor psychological state, with many caring for the elderly.
A total of 29 percent of IDPs are entrepreneurs who didn’t apply for employment; 21 percent of them plan to search for a job later; and 15 percent are not searching for work as they hope to return to their homes soon, Kashuba said.
Deputy Resident Representative of UNDP in Ukraine Inita Paulovica said that the UNDP IDP Employment Program covers eight regions of Ukraine and is aimed at proving jobs, self-employment, and entrepreneurship development to IDPs, as well as local residents of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
“It is planned to set up 1,500 jobs. We also will work towards developing entrepreneurship, so we expect nearly 4,000 jobs to be set up for integration of these people [IDPs] to society. If we work as a single whole – I mean international organizations, state establishments, private companies and non-governmental organizations – we would succeed in paving the way for the improvement of the present situation,” she said.
For his part, manager of the UNDP Project “Rapid Response to the Social and Economic Issues of Internally Displaced Persons in Ukraine” Ruslan Fedorov said that 73 organizations were chosen as a result of the contest announced in March 2015 to set up over 1,500 jobs.
He said that the UNDP project, which is meant to help IDPs who are victims of the Donbas conflict and the occupation of Crimea, includes co-financing of salary funds and equipment supplies for enterprises and organizations.
The UNDP Employment project in Ukraine operates thanks to the financial support of Japan.
