News

The ninth session of the Monitoring Committee of Operational Programme "Human Resources Development" was held on November 15 in Sofia. It was chaired by Deyana Kostadinova, Deputy Minister on Labour and Social Policy. In the session took part  representatives from  the European Commission, national institutions  in charge of the HRD OP and NGOs. Roma organizations were represented by Deyan Kolev.

To date the HRD OP is at almost 100% planed, the payments within the current year having increased from 1.6 to 10%, according to Deputy Minister Kostadinova. She emphasized that actions have been undertaken to accelerate payments and plan new activities within remaining funds.

After continuous discussions changes have been introduced in some of the current operations and new criteria for selection of operations have been adopted in the sphere of employment, professional qualification, improving the quality of higher education and social service provision. Thus, for example. the Employment Agency will expand its work with vulnerable groups in the labor market by appointing new labour market mediators. The Committee adopted a proposal by Deyan Kolev that the newly recruited 100 mediators  work mainly with unemployed Roma: it would be good if these mediators are Roma, too, as labor offices have tangible need for Roma mediators as well as for expansion of  the Program for Roma employment mediators , argues Kolev.