In the organization of the Center for Education and Training – ZOPT, today in the Multimedia Hall of IEC Tehnopolis a roundtable was held on the topic “Improving the position of unemployed persons in the labor market”.
Speakers at the round table were Slaven Cipranic, ZOPT representative, David Percobic, Director of the Sector for EU Projects and Financial Management and Control at the Employment Agency of Montenegro (ZZZCG), then Stanko Lakovic in front of the Fund for Professional Rehabilitation and Employment of Persons with disabilities in ZZZCG, as well as Predrag Vujicic, representative of the Ministry of Education of Montenegro.
They have brought participants closer to the current problems in the labor market, subsidies to employers in terms of financial incentives for employment of people with disabilities, and possible programs that can help unemployed people adapt to existing market conditions and acquire the necessary competencies in accordance with the institutions they represent.
More details about the programs of the Center for Education and Training – ZOPT were presented by Vida Cipranic, coordinator for adult education at the business center in Tehnopolis. As she pointed out, apart from the training program for learning foreign languages and computer work, ZOPT also organizes a large number of business skills development seminars, as well as vocational education programs for various activities and programs for hard-to-employ people.
In addition to these, ZOPT also implements the development of new programs in the IT sector, education and training for adults and children, as well as distance learning and the development of social entrepreneurship.
Counselors at the Center for Occupational Rehabilitation and Work Center ZOPT, Ivana Jovanovic and Marija Zoric, further explained to the participants their activities aimed at improving the position of the unemployed in the labor market.
Ivana Jovanovic explained that the Vocational Rehabilitation Program is intended for unemployed who have problems and obstacles to employment, such as persons with disabilities and persons with certain organizational and personal barriers (eg. gender, age, saturation with a certain profession in the labor market, etc.). According to her, professional rehabilitation includes 14 measures that provide individuals with renewed autonomy and enable integration into the working and social environment. Work with rehabilitants is based on individual treatment, where each team member (rehabilitation counselor, psychologist, doctor of occupational medicine, work technician, therapist, andragogue) tries to identify the main problems and obstacles in each person, in order to get a joint opinion with a recommendation on what a person needs and what should be done from the point of view of his involvement in the labor market.
On the basis of the obtained assessment of the remaining work capabilities, rehabilitants are involved in various programs, such as psychological and social rehabilitation (which influences their motivation, renews and acquires communication skills, raises self-confidence, etc.), job search skills programs (intended for those who want to look for a job, but they do not know how), finding a suitable job with the mediation of the Employment Agency, analyzing and adapting the workplace, acquiring work skills at a specific workplace or, if it is established that a rehabilitant cannot be included in the open labor market, he is referred to the social inclusion modules (protective workshops, work centers, etc.).
The round table was organized with the aim of gathering potential partners for implementation of active employment policies and their networking in order to strengthen the participation of funds for financing projects related to more efficient employment, creation of new programs that stimulate employment, reduction of the unemployment rate, presentation of funding possibilities, and the use of resources for employment at the local level.
