Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Mr. Igor Lukšić, PhD, met with the representatives of Youth SDP

The Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Mr. Igor Lukšić met the representatives of Youth SDP, who submitted a petition on the Governments Decision on employment of trainees in governmental agencies, without compensation on the basis of mutual consent. Mr. Lukšić welcomed the initiative of Youth SDP and the gathering of young people around one idea, stressing that the decision of the Government is positive and stimulating being justified in the financial crisis context, however it was misinterpreted by the public. He repeated that the objective of the Governments decision was to enable the possibility for young people, that if an institution in which they want to go through the apprenticeship does not have financial resources; this can be done without compensation on the basis of their consent. "In my opinion this is entirely positive decision, bearing in mind that a large number of institutions, due to limited funds, are not in position to employ trainees. Thus we created a possibility to go through apprenticeship and obtain further education in our institutions. When developing the Budget for 2010, we will try to approve to the Employment Bureau, the same amount of funds that was approved last year for these purposes, with the objective of assigning these funds to economy in order to perform rationalization of the number of employees and provide for the long-term investments in Montenegrin economy. There is now a widespread impression that by doing this the Government is closing the door to young people, which is misleading. If you take a look at the structure of employees in the Ministry of Finance, you will see that young people are working on the most important positions. Im open for employing young people and trainees in our institution even in the next period, off course, within our financial possibilities