Textile companies in Novi Pazar, which export most of their production to the EU, Russian and the countries of the former Soviet Union, currently have a need for over 1,000 workers.
Tailors and seamstresses are the most in demand and their average salary here is around 500 EUR. Since there aren’t enough of these worker profiles in Novi Pazar, the textile companies have to ‘import’ workers from Raska, Kraljevo and North Kosovo. At the moment, 6,000 people work in Novi Pazar’s textile industry.
The general manager of the Association Novi Pazar Textile Companies, Nermin Bali says that a job for 200 textile workers has been launched but they received very few job applications. He fears that the problem with finding the adequate workforce will be even more pronounced, since young people are not that keen to work behind machines.
The insufficient number of available textile workers is not only a problem in Novi Pazar, but rather in entire Serbia. Textile companies say that the interest in textile schools has been diminishing for years and that younger people are more interested in other types of jobs.
“The lack of tailors and seamstresses is visible in entire Serbia. Older workers have retired, and we failed to educate a new generation of textile workers. A lot of domicile textile companies have gone under which made young people think that there was no perspective in textile industry. Vojvodina, Belgrade and several other areas in Serbia are in dire need of textile workers. A dual education project for textile workers is being implemented in 11 towns in Serbia, but it takes at least three years for them to complete their education”, Milorad Vasiljevic from the Serbian Chamber of Commerce says.
(Vecernje Novosti, 01.03.2018)
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