Azem: Lack of job safety, low wages are boosting workers' flight

Independent Kosovo Private Sector Union Chairman (SPSPK), Yusuf Azemi, has talked about the challenges workers in the private sector face, stressing that serious working conditions and lack of security are directly affecting young people from the country.

He in an interview for Online Economy cites two factors that, according to him, are making the attitude of workers in Kosovo increasingly difficult, which are low wages and salary delays.

I've been looking for myself a five-six-month-old who, maybe I've often regretted when I told the young people, because there's no standing here. It turns out she's real. The fact that such a large number of employees who lose their lives in their workplace, the fact that we have enormously small salaries, the fact that today is the date, if I'm not mistaken 17-18, and there are many workers who haven't taken their wages for the month of March, are all these elements that workers, especially young people, will leave. Because we have not created conditions here to stay or at least to have the minimum perspective for their lives in Kosovo”, Azemi said.

According to him, one of the main problems remains the failure to implement laws protecting workers' rights and security.

And if we don't get these, so these cases don't happen, unfortunately we're saying these cases most of the time we're highlighting them as unions and you as media, otherwise the others aren't taken. It's the Law on Safety and Health at Work, it's the Labour Law and all other laws, that's not being respected, it's not being implemented. And I said, "Inshalls are these workers in God's mercy, otherwise the owners of companies and state for the first time, are not giving away what's going on with them." Today, this worker is buried, tomorrow he doesn't remember anyone to say, "Hey, this employee who died there or has a family, or has any children, should somebody take care of him." But their goal has been, we have access to resources from them and ultimately not to deal with them. Imagine what I'm saying now is a recession, when we're working, we're dying in our workplace, and we don't have absolutely” stimulus, Azemi stressed.

He added that differences between the public sector and private sector are pronounced, noting the lack of security and protection for private sector workers.

Until public sector workers have always said, the tools that are being separated, they are more dangerous at their place of work, they are more comfortable, they work less, they are stimulated, and we as employees of the private sector of Kosovo in some form are demitated, and in some form we are blackmailed by our bodies and by the owners of the” companies, he said further.

In the end, he warned that the country is currently facing a serious lack of labour, especially of qualified workers.

Kosovo in crisis of lack of workers, only those who do not see it. Because it's an extremely big crisis, because even the number of deaths that are coming, are coming because workers without any qualifications for certain jobs, company owners are being forced to take to the job market workers who are not qualified for that job, and that's part of the process that's all happening. It's a shortage of workers, especially qualified workers, there's not because we've lost them with the wages we have, starting with the media yet, <x1...

For 2025 about 72 percent of young people in Kosovo see themselves at different levels, with a future abroad.

Asked how powerful their desire to leave Kosovo is, only 28 percent said they are not aiming to emigrate.

According to statistics collected by Covege2 platform The EU, which follows the situation in Western Balkan countries aimed at integration into the European Union, Kosovo continues to lag behind most of the region in many areas.