ZAGREB, June 18, 2020 – Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and Minister of Labour and Pension System Josip Aladrovic on Thursday presented the first 106 grant agreements for the second phase of a women’s employment scheme, with women providing care for the elderly and disabled.
“We’ve created an instrument to return more mature women living in rural areas to the labour market as well as engaging local government and NGOs in providing care for the elderly,” Plenkovic said.
The project is being financed with a grant from the European Social Fund (ESF) and it helps include target groups in the labour market for a period of 12 months.
The total value of the grants is HRK 222 million and today 106 grants valued at HRK 192 million were presented. They will enable 2,117 unemployed women to find a job and provide care for around 13,000 elderly citizens.
This is the second phase of this project and in the first phase about 6,000 women cared for about 30,000 elderly citizens, Plenkovic added.
Plenkovic underlined that in the current financial period Croatia had HRK 14.4 billion at its disposal from the ESF and that more than contracts had been signed for more than HRK 9 billion. For the sake of comparison, in October 2016, only HRK 135 million was paid out to beneficiaries and so far the amount has increased to HRK 5.26 billion, he said.
Aladrovic: More funds due to the number of applications
Minister Aladrovic underlined that the project had been ongoing for three years.
“The best proof of the amount of interest and quality of this project and what it means for local government is probably the fact that in less than 48 hours more applications were received than the HRK 300 million earmarked for phase 2 can cover,” he said.
Hence, we have decided to take additional funds from the ESF and the grants for the second stage of the project now stand at HRK 550 million, he said.
This project covers three of the four priorities set by ESF – employment, education, and social inclusion.
