Tiina Pelkonen

The province of Southern Savo suffers from emigration and the ageing of its population. The only part of the population whose number is rising are immigrants. Currently, the province has approximately 2000 immigrant residents and their number is increasing by 50-100 individuals per year.

– Roughly half of the immigrants come from Russia. There are also many Estonians. In addition, we have refugees from Afghanistan, Sudan, Myanmar, Thailand and Bosnia-Herzegovina, says Samuli Jalkanen, senior planner of the Southern Savo T&E Centre.

He outlines the survey conducted by the Centre last spring, according to which the immigrants with secondary level vocational training are best employed, especially if they have acquired their training in Finland. The second best group to be employed has a university degree.

In Southern Savo, the immigrants´ unemployment percent is almost 30. It seems the employment in the Metropolitan area has risen, but we are still lagging behind.

This is how immigrants are supported

Until now the T&E Centre has supported immigrants´ employment by providing focused labour market training, opportunities for practical training, skills tests, work on a pay subsidy and ESF projects.

The Kontakti project was launched in 2001 and will be finished next year. Besides maintaining the standard activities, in terms of immigrants´ integration and employment, it has provided a network of authorities and a meeting place for both employers and immigrants.

A shorter training project lasting over a year instructs immigrants in the Finnish language skills, required in working life, through practical training, instead of being traditionally taught in a classroom.

– We have a pilot group in Savonlinna and we are collecting information for the next project.

The third ESF period, about to start soon, promises more. The T&E Centre has two rather extensive projects targeted at immigrants under way. In the area of five T&E Centres, located in Eastern Finland, they intend to focus on employment-based immigration. The project would facilitate the availability of labour in certain labour-intensive fields.

Another project which is being planned, would be related to immigration and aimed at developing learning models of Finnish.

– We hope to be engaged in a few more projects on refugees in the Savonlinna-Mikkeli region. In addition, we expect them to be funded by the Ministry of Labour from the ERF.