Looking for a job? They look forward to seeing you in the hospitality industry. Because they don’t get the vacancies filled there. The Flemish Minister for Work and Social Economy, Hilde Crevits (CD&V), has now drawn up an action plan together with the sector. ‘We will start a training offensive from September’, it sounds.
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There are 3,500 open vacancies in the sector today. The main cause is simple: corona. Matthias De Caluwe, CEO of Horeca Vlaanderen explains: “We were already looking for people for corona, but then there was a period of lockdown twice during the crisis, which means that a lot of people have left for other sectors and that don’t come back. The need is urgent now. Three in four catering entrepreneurs indicate in a survey that they are really looking for people. 52 percent say they are considering an additional closing day. This can bring about a different landscape.’
Solutions now have to be found and for this purpose Horeca Vlaanderen, the Horeca Forma training institute, the temporary employment sector, VDAB, the umbrella organization of Syntraopleidingen and Minister Crevits sat together on Wednesday afternoon. Crevits wants to train more than a thousand people for the catering sector in the coming six months. That is 440 more than in previous years: ‘much more than is the case today, we want to offer very accessible training courses to bring people who have nothing to do with the catering industry to that sector on the one hand and also to receive much more training for people who are already active in the catering industry’, according to the minister. Bottleneck occupations are hotel manager, restaurant manager, hotel employee, chef, assistant cook, waiter, busboy, maître d’hotel, all positions for which there are specific training courses.
Employment agencies
An important part of the action plan is the publication of these training courses. Minister Crevits primarily counts on the temporary employment sector for this, ‘but we ask everyone to map these courses en masse, including the restaurant owners’.
120 million euros is the total budget of Minister Crevits for training across all sectors. ‘I am now allocating several millions for additional training in the catering industry’, the minister says Belgian know. ‘Half a million euros will go to a bus that offers mobile training to show people almost where they live what a job in the hospitality industry can mean.’
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