The Ministry of Inclusion and Social Security has called farmers' organizations to a meeting next Tuesday to address the problem of vacancies in the countryside. At a time when protests in the primary sector continue, with the incorporation today of large agricultural organizations into the mobilizations, Minister Elma Saiz has announced the holding of this meeting.
“There is a labor problem,” stated the minister, pointing out that in the last ten years 100,000 jobs have been lost in the countryside. From here, Saiz proposes acting using immigration policy, to provide personnel to fill these vacancies, through a “circular, orderly and regular” migration. In this sense, she has given the strawberry trees in Huelva as an example of circular migration.
The minister has not given details of the steps to be taken, and has limited herself to proposing the meeting on Tuesday to listen to the demands of the agricultural sector. What she has done is defend the policy followed by the Government with respect to the countryside. “It is on the political agenda, but not from now on, but rather it is a set of measures that have been put in place,” stated the minister, citing the Food Chain law, approved in the last legislature and which is now wanted reinforce, although there are no details about the reinforcement here either; and the 4,000 million euros granted within the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). These are statements made in the Europa Press breakfast briefings.
On the other hand, the minister has announced that at the end of the month an observatory will be created to monitor benefits for cessation of activity for the self-employed. This benefit, the equivalent of the unemployment benefit for the self-employed, allowed one million of these self-employed workers to face the consequences of the pandemic, and much more recently, in 2023, there was a total of 14,000 who accessed the benefit. this benefit. The objective of the observatory will be to evaluate, a few years after the implementation of this benefit, how it has worked and what aspects should be modified, and to do so through social dialogue.
