Vouchers for Foreign Workers for Language Learning – Serbia Not Considering It, Neighboring Country Implementing Them

While they still did jobs far away from the consumers’ and the clients’ eyes, the language barrier did not seem unbridgeable. In the meantime, they started driving public buses, they serve at restaurants, they deliver food. Only through legal means, close to 50,000 foreign workers entered Serbia this year. Although there are more and more of them every year, there are still no indications that somebody will try to teach them our language systemically.

In the neighboring Croatia, as Forbes Hrvatska writes, first the City of Zagreb and now the state as well, intend to cover the costs of language courses for migrant workers. For a start, they are preparing brief Croatian language educational programs in several key sectors such as tourism and hospitality. The state will start financing the learning of language for foreign workers through a system of vouchers. It is still not known when those vouchers will truly be available and under what conditions.

As Forbes Srbija has learned at the National Employment Service, there are still no such ideas in Serbia.

– We don’t have such programs. There are no plans to implement them either as of yet, as far as our service is considered – says Zoran Martinovic, the director of the National Employment Service.

At the Chamber of Commerce of Serbia (CCIS), they clarify that companies have not sent any request for working on the issue yet.

Drivers spend three months on training

Now the employers have to be resourceful. Depending on the type of the job on which they hire reinforcements from abroad. It’s been half a year already since the citizens of Belgrade have been transported by the buses of the private transporter Arriva by drivers from Sri Lanka.

– We have solved the problem by organizing a training for them – they say at the company and add that the course took three months.

The Serbian Association of Employers is more familiar with the problem. Their members solve it in different ways.

– There is an example of a contractor which hires construction workers from Turkey. They have realized that it is important to them not just for the workers to be able to communicate with them, but for them to be able to communicate with the workers. For them, it was more cost-effective to hire an interpreter. They envisaged that job through systematization and now the interpreter is at the construction site every day – says Jelena Jevtovic of the Serbian Association of Employers.

The problem, however cannot always be solved that easily. Especially in the situations when the workers don’t even want to learn Serbian.

Workers staying in Serbia for too short a time

It’s not easy to decide to invest in training in the case of workers who are in Serbia only for a short time. While waiting to move on, to a more desirable destination.

– There was a case of a group of Cuban workers who came over to work in hospitality. They came over regularly, with the permits. They went to their jobs the first two days, and they were gone the third day. They had left for Spain or Great Britain – Jevtovic notes.

Foreign workers who arrive to take more demanding positions prepare ahead. They most frequently take private classes, at their own expense.

From February, foreigners to obtain permits more easily

The implementation of the new Law on the Employment of Foreign Nationals starts on February 1. The procedure of obtaining the residence and work permits will be unified and last for two weeks at the most.

At the moment, the employer asks the National Employment of Serbia to check whether it can hire local workers for the positions it wants to fill with workers from abroad. Then the foreign national addresses the Ministry of Interior and seeks a residence permit.

– According to the current law, the foreign national has to check in a hotel or a hostel and go to the police and file the request for a residence permit. They then wait for a month for the police to do the check. The permit could cost RSD 19,000. The employer then submits the request for getting the work permit to the National Employment Service. It costs RSD 14,000 and takes less than a month to be issued. Altogether, the procedure takes about two months. From February 1, the workers will not have to even come to Serbia, they will be able to finish everything electronically. Now we are waiting for the rulebooks which will develop the details – explains Jelena Jevtovic.

Ministarstvo unutrašnjih poslova Republike Srbije

Unija poslodavaca Srbije Beograd

Nacionalna služba za zapošljavanje Kragujevac

Privredna komora Srbije

MobiLitas doo Požarevac

Ministry of Interior

Serbian Association of Employers

National Employment Service

Chamber of Commerce of Serbia

Arriva

Jelena Jevtovic

Zoran Martinovic

seasonal jobs

training