Why do children in Greece work in tourism and how is it in our country... Ivelin Kichukov in front of FACTS

The summer season on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast has officially opened, but how will we cope… Do the hotels have staff, can they not open, what is the problem with issuing work visas for employees from third countries outside the European Union. Ivelin Kichukov, chairman of the Bulgarian Tourism Association (BAT), spoke to FAKTI.

- Mr. Kichukov, we keep boasting that we will have a successful summer season. And what comes out, conditions - given by God, and do we have people to work…
- Unfortunately, the situation at the moment is really very tense before the start of the summer season. According to the latest data, the vacancies at the end of May are about 60,000, with 80,000 in neighboring Greece, which, if we can talk about competition at all, is our direct competitor.

- How many workers does the tourism sector need?
- There are about 50,000 jobs in the regions of Varna and Burgas alone. I will not comment on the fact that, when we talk about the summer season, it does not necessarily mean sea destinations, but also mountain ones. That is, if we add forestry, adventure, spa, balneology, the figure will grow to 80,000 jobs. There are investors who expect about 500 workers and have already started opening their sites, although there are many unknowns in the equation. This issue is 70/30 in favor of the low skilled staff at the moment over the skilled. Here it is important to note the following - when we talk about winter tourism, we mainly mean skiing, balneology, spa, and the latter belong to year-round tourism. Many of the sites do not open in winter due to the climatic conditions and only work in spring, summer and autumn. The occupancy of many sites in the winter resorts is sometimes much greater in summer compared to winter, as many Bulgarians, as well as foreigners from neighboring countries, prefer to spend the summer in the mountains.

- Why did it happen that the Bulgarians are ready to work in the summer in tourism, but not on our sea… Is the Bulgarian workforce fleeing or not?
- Very interesting question. For a large part of Bulgarian society, the answer is that wages are low, attitudes are bad, investors are criminals, etc. Even in social networks this is encouraged as a fact. My personal opinion and view on the subject is that this is something quite normal. The topic is long, but in order not to bore the readers, I will try to be as short as possible with a few examples.
Let me start with the salaries first.

A chef earns an average of 20-30 BGN per hour.

The same money, and sometimes less, is taken by a cook from Turkey and Serbia, even Macedonia. Do you think that the investor has no desire to hire a Bulgarian chef, considering that there is also a language barrier with the foreigner!? Naturally, there is a desire, and a huge one. The reasons for this not happening are many, and I will mention only a few of them. The first is that there is a lack of Bulgarian personnel, and the reasons are not only in the investor, but also in the workers themselves, as well as in our educational system, which does not produce practically prepared personnel.

The other problem is that those who want to work very often want to be on low wages because they have bad credit and because there is no personal bankruptcy law, they are forever in debt.

Because of this, they often prefer, especially the professional staff, to go work elsewhere, outside the country. Also, the worker himself under our labor legislation and the lack of information, if he decides not to come to work, knows that the labor legislation is primarily in his favor and he cannot suffer serious sanctions. He leaves the workplace and goes home. Let's not say that he goes to the neighboring restaurant or hotel for work because he just decided to do so. If, after all, the investor agrees to the terms of pay set by the worker because he is up against the wall, he has a huge problem with that money in hand, again because of our legislation and given the recent changes that have been made to it.

Think about it - if a tourism investor has over 100 workers and half of them have such problems, what can he do...

The chance of him hiring them, even if he has a great desire, is zero. There is another problem. In Bulgaria, if a foreign student wishes to work, unlike our neighbors, he has to submit documents to the competent authority again to have this right, while in many other places this is arranged through his student visa, which also helps businesses there and accordingly represents an obstacle with us. I will also give you another small example in neighboring Greece. After the children finish school, they have the right to work as assistants in their parents' tourist sites, but without any administrative obstacles, which on the one hand is a way to help medium-sized businesses, and on the other hand, parents to properly educate their children and from an early age to have the opportunity to prepare them for the continuation of their business. In addition, the world is open - Turks, Serbs, Macedonians and workers from other countries outside the EU come to us to work for more money, as do Bulgarians, heading to other destinations.

The psychology itself is as follows - when you work abroad, you save, and then you invest in your own country.

But that somehow doesn't work when you're in your hometown. This is especially true for younger people who, in addition to the above, like to be in new places, meet new people, new cultures, etc. It is also not unimportant that for some specialties in the sector in certain countries there is a mandatory tip, customers are more solvent and your work is better rewarded not so much as a salary, but as additional bonuses. The more important question is whether those who work abroad will then return and whether they will invest the earned funds in our country, i.e. whether the investment climate and lifestyle in our own country suits them.

- How big is the problem with issuing work visas for employees outside the European Union. There are those willing, but they hardly come… The summer season has already started, and we have no staff. What we don't do as humans.
- Unfortunately, a “big problem“ is putting it very mildly. At the moment, the problem is huge. In the last days of the work of the National Assembly, the people's representatives from all parties united and introduced the first changes to the law on foreigners, which is a small but very significant step forward in solving this problem, which has remained unresolved for the last 10 years. This year, this was also the main topic around which we united with colleagues in the industry and worked tirelessly. We have shown that we can achieve results when we are together. There are many interested, but the administrative obstacles at the moment are enormous.
Despite promises by the state to actively engage in solving the problem of issuing work visas by expanding resources in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and diplomatic missions, no measures have yet been taken to solve this problem. The only option is secondment of employees from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is currently not happening.

- Can you give examples…
? - The visa center in Uzbekistan has not been able to record application dates for almost a month. Its 10-day electronic system only allows for a period of a few hours to book an appointment to submit a visa application. If someone is lucky enough to hit that time frame, then they would have a chance of getting a date in about 20 days to file for a “C“ visa. After submitting the application, the visa processing period is another 30 days. This practically means that employees who would be lucky enough to get to the stage of “submitting a visa application” could only arrive in the second half of the summer season…

The procedure for obtaining a “D“ visa, which is for seasonal employment up to 9 months and a single work and residence permit for up to 3 years, is three months.

This procedure is not only for seasonal workers in the tourism industry, but also for those who work in enterprises from other sectors of the economy.
There is almost no sector that does not rely on employees from abroad. Especially in the tourism industry, many of our colleagues started the procedure for obtaining a work permit for foreigners from non-EU countries as early as December. For more than 5 months, their employees have not arrived at work because of the administrative procedures and unresolved problems of the administration – for example, because of the lack of enough employees to work on the procedure.
And something else. If a person has already gone through the difficult administrative procedure in the "Migration" Directorate; to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which on average takes about three months, and has received permission, the Embassy of the Republic of Bulgaria in Tashkent will make an appointment for submitting an application for a “D“ visa. approximately 45 days later.

Thus, the average period for obtaining a “D“ turns out to be at least 60 days.

The situation is even worse for people wishing to work in Bulgaria from Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, India and Bangladesh. Citizens of Kyrgyzstan travel hundreds of kilometers to apply for a visa in Kazakhstan. The visa center in Almaty, which is closer to the Kyrgyz border, has announced that there are no available dates for submitting applications for a “C“ visa. Free hours are rarely given only in Astana, which is 12 hours away from Kyrgyzstan. There, available dates are 20 to 30 days ahead. Visa processing is more than 30 days. If a company has currently registered for seasonal employment for up to 90 days with the Employment Agency for workers, possibly these workers would arrive only at the end of July, which also exceeds the periods of work in Bulgaria indicated in the documents submitted to the Employment Agency !?

At our embassy in India, the appointment to submit applications for a “C“ and visa “D“ is completely closed until December this year

on the grounds that they have received a large number of visa applications that cannot be processed due to lack of staff. Only the consul and a single staff member serve countries with a population of several billion, which leads to great delays and visa issuance times of 3 to 6 months. On this subject, we have received a letter from the consul, which we quote verbatim:
„To all interested!
I would like to inform you that currently the Consular Office in Delhi is no longer able to make appointments for classes after 30.11. year and is unable to process enrollments to date due to lack of staff. Every day, dozens of people who signed up from 3-6 months ago are waiting in front of the portal, but we cannot process them all, we even return them. There is no possibility of taking on new ones. This situation will continue for at least a few more months if Sofia does not send us additional employees.
Currently, the consul and his only assistant work 12 hours a day, but this does not solve the problem. We need people. Nothing else can be done, so please be patient. The situation is more than tragic for everyone, especially for tourists, students and seasonal workers, to whom we also cannot give hours before December.
(P.S. I'm sending this because of the dozens of inquiries and I don't have time to answer each one separately). Greetings!“

- The summer season has started, and we have no staff. What do we not do as humans? Where are there more workers missing – north or south…
- I have been saying very clearly for a year that for the last 10 years we have been working piecemeal in terms of tourism. While our neighbors have a clear concept and strategy in the last 5 years and the next 10, we have not had a national strategy for tourism for 15 years and it is not a priority. Even in the Recovery and Sustainability Plan there is not one euro for tourism. Despite the fact that the tourism sector currently produces 6% of GDP, and we can easily reach at least 15% with our natural resources. THIS IS A CRIME AGAINST THE STATE. We are solving one problem - in the case of the faster issuance of a document by the Employment Agency and other Bulgarian state bodies. Then we get to the Bulgarian embassies and consulates, where everything sinks in and we are at an impasse. These institutions are still Bulgarian and are under the management of our country in the person of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So I can't understand why everything done so far is getting destroyed. The Ministry of Tourism meets with the industry, talks, sees the problem, informs the Foreign Ministry and then we have complete silence. We ask if there is an option to send employees to solve the problem, but there is no answer. And at the end of May, days before the opening of the summer season. On the topic “north – south“ the problem is the same in both places. “Sunny Beach“ takes on 150 to 200 thousand workers. Not to mention “Golden Sands”, “St. Konstantin and Elena“ and other seaside resorts. And I will end by saying that we cannot want to be a desired destination if we do not offer a quality product, and such is achieved with personnel.
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Ivelin Kichukov was born in Burgas in 1971. He graduated with a degree in “Industrial Management” at Burgas University “Prof. Dr. Asen Zlatarov“ in 1999, in 2006 he received a degree in Law. in the South University “Neofite Rilski“ in Blagoevgrad, and 2020 – “Finance“ at the Academy of Economics “Dimitar A. Tsenov“ in Svishtov. He is currently a doctoral student in “Finance” in CA in Svishtov on the topic “Financial and economic analysis of the strategic transformation of tourism in Bulgaria”. Kichukov is the founder and chairman of the Board of Directors of BAT. He also founded a chain of small hotels.