As reported by Radio Prague, the upcoming visa, which does not grant its holder the right to relocate and is tied only to the duration of the employment contract, was announced last Monday during a meeting with representatives of the Employment Service of the Czech Republic by acting Prime Minister Andrej Babiš.
“Currently, visas are issued for 60 or 90 days. A one-year visa would help ease the entire process. Upon expiration of the employment contract, workers would return to their home country,” the prime minister said.
Czech companies in need of additional labor are again calling for a simplified regime for employing foreigners. “We feel an acute shortage not only of workers, equipment operators, drivers, mechanics, but also engineers,” lists Tomáš Koranda, director of the construction company Hochtief.
However, employing Ukrainians is very difficult for Czech firms, as this process is subject to a number of requirements. First, no Czech wishing to be employed must show interest in the offered vacancy. Next, the company must submit documents proving that it employs at least ten workers and demonstrate that it is actually engaged in business.
And last but not least, the company must itself find a suitable candidate for the vacancy abroad. “If a company is already in the ‘Ukraine’ regime, it has to wait for its future employee from six to seven months,” says Tereza Hejlová, a representative of the Union of Industry and Transport. This, it must be said, is a certain progress.
“Until recently, the processing time was nine months. By the time the worker arrived, a new construction season had already begun, so it was impossible to plan anything that way,” recalls Tomáš Koranda, repeating that the process of employing Ukrainians must be simplified.
“We have already increased the quota for accepting workers from ten to twenty thousand people, and this measure primarily concerns the ‘Ukraine’ project,” said acting Minister of Labor Jaroslava Němcová (ANO).
Let us recall that the Czech Republic has the lowest unemployment rate of all EU countries. In April of this year, there were 242,798 job seekers in the country, and 267,107 vacancies. According to the Ministry of Labor, 374,000 foreigners work legally in the Czech Republic, 70,000 of whom are from Ukraine.