And the Sicilian region spent 153 million on personal assistants

The Sicilian Region has spent just over 153 million to train personal service workers, which in concrete terms means beauticians, social workers, and assistants for the autonomy and communication of the disabled, against a need taken from the Excelsior database of 27,760. On the other hand, it has spent 3.5 million for training in mechanics, plant and construction, i.e. in one of the areas where companies have the most difficulty in finding qualified personnel: the need from the Excelsior database is 67,450. These are all figures that emerge from the analysis made by Maurizio Pirillo, director general of the Sicilian Region's vocational training department, and disseminated during the ESF+ (the new European Social Fund) promotion event held in Palermo. The data used refer to notices 8/2016 and 2/2018 under the European Social Fund. And scrolling through Pirillo's slides another striking fact is that concerning commercial services: 6.116 million were spent against a declared staff requirement of 84,640. For the tourism and sports area, expenditure in two notices amounted to almost 39.2 million against a staffing requirement of 68,850. 'The notices of the previous programming cycles,' Pirillo explained, 'were basically containers. We had a financial endowment, applications were submitted, and whoever arrived best or first obtained funding without any planning strategy on the part of the regional administration'.

And it is interesting to see how it went in general, again with reference to the two notices we mentioned, with a comparison with the employment needs according to the data in the Excelsior database, and 'there is a complete discrepancy between what was financed with Notices 8 and 2 with respect to the draught sectors. We did the training by dedicating resources to a much less relevant sector such as personal services,' says Pirillo. Here's how it went: with Notice 8/2016 there were 42,678 trained subjects for total commitments of 130.375 million, a cost per individual recipient of EUR 3,045. At the end of the courses, 11,926 people were hired. Under Notice 2/2018, 12,593 subjects were trained for a total expenditure of EUR 115.957 million and a cost per individual trained of EUR 9,028. In this case, the subjects employed at the end of the courses were 2,046. Quite a few, one might say. "It is clear that something is not working, and it is not someone's fault but a programming approach that has been given," Pirillo explains. "In the case of the declaration of trained subjects, no mandatory communication resulted for about 40,000 people.