The Old Cinema of Arico Viejo hosted this Tuesday, February 8, the joint act of presentation of the Comprehensive Employment Service for the municipality by the Arico City Council and the Union of General Workers of the Canary Islands (UGT Canarias). An event attended by the mayor of Arico, Sebastián Martín, the Councilor for Employment, Andrés Martínez, the secretary of UGT Canarias, Manuel Navarro and the SIE coordinator, José Gregorio Abad Rodríguez. The office will be installed in the Old Cinema of Arico Viejo with a schedule of 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. from Tuesday to Thursday and from May it will be permanent from Monday to Friday.
The Comprehensive Employment Service aims to facilitate access to employment, permanence and progress in the labor market for job seekers in the municipality and to contribute to improving the competitiveness of the business fabric. It is aimed at unemployed or employed people, registered in the Canarian Employment Service in a situation of administrative registration who, depending on their needs and requirements, may be job seekers and services or only service requesters. In the actions of the Comprehensive Employment Service, equal opportunities between men and women and people with functional diversity will be applied across the board.
In the presentation ceremony, the mayor of Arico, Sebastián Martín, indicated the importance of this close collaboration between the town hall and the UGT, “since one of the main objectives of the government is to serve the unemployed and improve the job opportunities of the population local”.
Martín clarified that in order to meet this objective “we have developed an agreement with UGT Canarias so that an Integral Employment Service is integrated in our municipality, aimed fundamentally at the orientation and training of unemployed people in order to improve access to work. It will provide direct service to unemployed people and will even avoid the need to go to the employment office in Granadilla de Abona because it will have powers, thanks to the agreement signed by the UGT and the Canary Islands Employment Service, of the data, curricula and the improvement of conditions”. The mayor expressed his satisfaction that Arico is going to become “the first municipality with a Comprehensive Service between the area of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Adeje”. In addition, he added that it will be available on Tuesdays and Thursdays and from May it will be permanently open.
The councilor mentioned that “in this same line, we have also developed projects to hire unemployed people, we have included items of about 250,000 euros in the budgets so that the Arico City Council itself has its own employment plan. In addition to the training courses, through the University of La Laguna, oriented to agriculture, waste management and renewable energies and the offer of 500 online courses that all ariqueros and ariqueras can access”.
Also, the Councilor for Employment, Andrés Martínez, pointed out that the Comprehensive Employment Service “is going to be important because it is going to be on-site in the municipality and for the neighbors, it will become an essential employment and training service that will serve, among other actions, to update labor data”. The councilor pointed out that thanks to this service “coordinated with the Employment and Local Development Agency of the Arico City Council, it can be a very important tool and it will open up more possibilities of accessing the labor market.”
On the other hand, the general secretary of UGT Canarias, Manuel Navarro, pointed out that “for the UGT, the Comprehensive Employment Service is key in the development of promotion and the approach of employability tools to citizens. It is a service that we have opted for since 2011 and the figures show that it is necessary to maintain and implement it, mainly in the municipalities furthest from the large cities that centralize the labor supply. For this reason, today is a great opportunity for us to repeat, for the second consecutive year, this collaboration with the Arico City Council. Reaching municipalities like this also makes it easier for us to transfer another of our services, such as the Technical Office for the Promotion of the Social Economy, and we are sure that it can be very well received in the area”.
Finally, the SIE coordinator, José Gregorio Abad Rodríguez, added that “we currently have open offices in Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Tenerife, Lanzarote and La Palma. Throughout the history of the service we have been incorporating technicians, specialized in the matter, with the aim of continuing to improve. This growth and improvement has been reflected in the figures since in 2020 we went from serving 2,561 to 4,640 last year, which represents an increase of 81% in just one year. And our expectations go through continuing to increase in this year that has just started”.
