After only six weeks in Government the new Minister for Employment and Pensions has been able to establish that contrary to what the GSD Government was saying when in Government, that the level of unemployment fluctuated between 450 and 500, the real number of unemployed in Gibraltar is over 1300. The GSLP/LIB Job Scheme gets off the ground this week and will gradually grow to absorb those that have applied to join the scheme, although Opposition Member, Danny Feetham, has had the cheek and the hard face to criticise it before it has even started despite the failure of the GSD Government to open up jobs for locally registered labour at the Employment Agency throughout the last four years.

The figure given by the last Government of the number of unemployed during 2011 was never accurate and they knew it. They only gave the figure of Gibraltarians registered at the ETB and since 80% of the jobs opened were not real vacancies because the Employment Service was accepting job vacancies with someone taken on already, something that was illegal, the jobless just stopped going to the ETB and did not register at all. Many unemployed complained that they were sent for interviews to vacancies that were already filled and they went through the process of interviews knowing that the job had already been filled. This is no longer the case. Jobs must now be advertised so that those unemployed get a real chance to fill it. In addition to Gibraltarians registered unemployed, which is the figure given by the GSD Government, the new Government has found that there were another 200 odd made up of other British citizens, Portuguese and other nationalities which were not included in the unemployment figures. Neither were those on vocational training who now start on the new scheme with the new salary and a commitment to a job at the end of the training, nor all those that have applied to join the scheme, who were unemployed but appeared no-where, there was no record of them ever existing. Add to this those persons on Social Assistance, some of whom are able to work, and those on sheltered employment who were without proper contracts of employment, and the level of local unemployment is sky high compared to what people were led to believe prior and during the election campaign.

There was, however, a tacit admittance during the election campaign that the GSD had not been telling the truth where the level of jobless was concerned, and that came from the mouth of Danny Feetham himself when he criticised the cost to Government of the GSLP/LIB new Job Scheme. He then said that at £912 per month, which is the new level of remuneration of those in training, the scheme could cost £11 million. Well it could only cost that if the level of unemployment was 1000 and not the 450-500 they claimed it was. As it happens it is even worse than Feetham admitted, it is over 1300. Shame on you Danny!

CLASH OF THE CHESS TITANS

In the picture: The reigning Ladies World Champion, Yifan Hou from China comes face to face with the best woman player in the world Judit Polgar from Hungary. This is the first time that these two Chess Champions meet.