Only 8 out of a total of 49 recommendations of the Court of Auditors to the Ministers of Labor and Social Policy and of Education and Science to achieve adequate interaction between demand and supply on the labor market through the acquisition of new knowledge, retraining and training, have been fully implemented. This is indicated by the analysis of the implementation of the recommendations under the audit report “Vocational Training for Adults“ for the period 2017-2019, the Court of Auditors announced.
Another part of the Court of Auditors' recommendations to the two ministries are in the process of being implemented, but there are also those that have not been implemented at all.
„The Court of Auditors gave specific recommendations to the Ministers of Labor and Social Policy and Education and Science, which were to be implemented by the end of 2022“, the control body emphasizes.
During the audit, it was found that the actions of the Ministries of Labor and Social Policy and Education and Science in connection with the growing need for the acquisition of new knowledge and skills, retraining and lifelong learning are not sufficiently effective. In 2019 Bulgaria was in penultimate place among the EU countries in terms of the share of the population aged 25-64 participating in education and training, and the results were nearly 6 times lower than the EU average.
The audit then found that there was no objective picture of the specialties with expected deficits.
Planned training for adults - unemployed and employed persons, financed by the state budget and European funds, had a negligible increase - only 0.7 percent in 12 years.
In this regard, the conclusion is that the low participation of adults in programs such as “lifelong learning, acquisition of qualification and retraining“ in turn dooms these groups of people to be unattractive for businesses that are looking for qualified labor, adequate to the new challenges on the labor market, the National Audit Office indicates.