Promoting public works and municipal services to stimulate job creation in wake of coronavirus crisis on Spain’s Costa Almeria

HUERCAL-OVERA Council has unveiled plans aimed at generating job creation opportunities to help the municipality recover from the social and economic impact of the coronavirus crisis.
The local authority said it is planning to promote public works, reinforce municipal services and drive change in the productive model for the exploitation of rural resources.
“After the paralysis of economic activity the local administration needs to use the resources within our reach to stimulate the creation of employment, which has been seriously damaged in these nearly two months of the State of Alarm,” commented Huercal-Overa mayor Francisca Lourdes Fernandez.
The mayor explained that the administration’s Covid-19 crisis recovery plan includes a budget allocation for investment in public works “which will allow for the improvement of municipal infrastructure at the same time as creating jobs through the recruitment of the self-employed and small local businesses and by expanding the municipal company service management workforce.”
The council has also drawn up an extraordinary works and services plan for the temporary recruitment of people in a vulnerable situation. There will be the reinforcement of essential municipal areas through hiring for cleaning and disinfection of public spaces, launching a ‘social promotion and community prevention’ plan, auctioning collaboration agreements with the Chamber of Commerce and strengthening a sustainable model for farming and stockbreeding.
“Huercal-Overa has an extensive agricultural area which represents a great potential for launching work projects which make the creation of quality employment positions possible,” the Fernandez commented.
“To develop this potential the government team is backing an economically and environmentally sustainable productive model based on the training of new farmers and stockbreeders, direct assistance for undertakings through sustainable agricultural and stockbreeding exploitations which create wealth in the short, medium and long-term and which remain in the municipality, and collaboration with entities and collectives which offer comprehensive support to rural enterprises, especially when it comes to their product output,” the mayor said.
She also said the council was working in collaboration with the University of Almeria and the Junta de Andalucia’s IFAPA Agriculture and Fishing Training and Investigation Institute on drawing up a future rural by-law, which she referred to as “an essential part of the sustainable rural development plant for Huercal-Overa.”
A further key aspect to the municipal employment recovery plan is training. The council is programming the organisation of activities orientated at giving people the chance to acquire or update professional skills, and for promoting online work, cooperative initiatives and other kinds of undertakings.