Illustration photo – On April 6, 2022, a Ukrainian receives forms and information leaflets at the counter of the labor office in Ústí nad Labem. The labor office in the Ústí Region registers 1,146 applicants for employment from among refugees from Ukraine. About 500 of them have already found work.
Prague – At the end of January, 94,400 refugees from Ukraine were working in the Czech Republic. In total, over the past year, 190,400 people found a place with a visa for temporary protection. Some have already returned to their homeland or left their jobs. ČTK was informed by the spokesperson of the General Directorate of the Labor Office, Kateřina Beránková. She specified that seven out of ten workers are women. Most often, refugees occupy positions with lower qualifications. Application in professional professions is mainly hindered by the language barrier. Experts recommend strengthening Czech language courses and speeding up the recognition of education. Last year, the state paid insurance companies for refugees from Ukraine premiums in the amount of 4.49 billion crowns. Refugees received health care for roughly 1.9 billion CZK, roughly half of that of the Czechs per person. The difference, about 2.6 billion crowns, will remain with the health insurance companies.
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Photo gallery: Russian invasion of Ukraine
Minister of Labor Marian Jurečka (KDU-ČSL) recently said that refugees had paid nearly eight billion kroner in levies to the state by the end of last year.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24 last year. Since then, the Home Office has issued 488,200 protection visas. Most of them were women and children.
People with a protection visa can work in the Czech Republic without obstacles, they do not need a permit. The employer must report their acceptance to the labor office. According to the proposal, the social administration should also start registering those workers who work on an agreement.
According to Beránková, a total of 190,356 new arrivals found work in the Czech Republic from last year to the end of January, of which 132,573 were women. At the end of last month, 94,383 people with protection visas were working. The largest number were in the Central Bohemian Region, over 16,200. It was followed by the Pilsen Region with 13,900 employed refugees and South Moravia with 10,000. Most often, people were employed as assembly workers, helpers in construction, production and transport, or as machine operators.
“In certain areas, employers got the employees they needed,” said the spokeswoman.
The Minister of Labor recently said that the aid given to refugees is beginning to be returned. “In levies, these people paid more than four billion kroner for health insurance last year. In total, the sum of all levies is around eight billion crowns. The aid that was paid from the state budget is gradually beginning to be returned,” said Jurečka.< /p>
At the end of January, the labor offices also registered 16,300 Ukrainian job seekers and applicants, i.e. about 900 more than in December. They made up five percent of all applicants.
Autumn research by the PAQ Research agency showed that the employment of refugees is growing. They mostly work full-time. Despite their higher qualifications, they often perform auxiliary and manual work. People with knowledge of Czech are much more often employed. However, only some of the incoming students attend the courses. The obstacle is money and lack of time. Among other things, experts recommend strengthening language teaching, speeding up the recognition of education and ensuring enough places in kindergartens so that parents of young children can get involved in the work.
The Labor Office contributes to Czech language courses. So far, 2,838 refugees have entered them and 2,007 of them have completed it. “When it comes to professional retraining, there are fewer of them. The reason is lack of knowledge of the Czech language,” added Beránková. In January, 18 people with protection visas took part in professional retraining.
2.6 billion crowns will be left for insurance companies, refugees used little health care
Last year, the state paid insurance companies for refugees from Ukraine premiums in the amount of 4.49 billion crowns. Refugees received health care for roughly 1.9 billion CZK, roughly half of that of the Czechs per person. The difference, about 2.6 billion crowns, will remain with the health insurance companies. This follows from the statements of the ministries of finance, health and health insurance companies to ČTK. Refugees who have obtained a temporary protection visa in their country are entitled to health insurance. For adults, the state pays insurance premiums for 150 days. To children, seniors or mothers taking care of small children during the validity of the visa.
“The estimate of the increased payment of the state public health insurance for war refugees for last year amounts to 4.49 billion crowns. At the same time, however, it was possible to effectively involve them in the labor market, thanks to which the collection of taxes and insurance premiums increased,” said Stefan Fous from the Ministry of Finance when asked by ČTK .
“I am glad that as a state we were able to take care of Ukrainian refugees within the framework of the system, offer them health care and thereby not jeopardize the quality and availability of care for Czech citizens,” said Minister of Health Vlastimil Válek (TOP 09 ).
At the end of last June, four months after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the representatives of the board of directors of the General Health Insurance Company (VZP), to which the vast majority of refugees signed up, assumed that payments from the state would not cover health care for Ukrainians.
< p>In January of this year, the chairman of the board of directors of VZP Tom Phillip (KDU-ČSL) said that by the end of November, refugees had received care for 1.55 billion crowns, the estimate for the whole year was 1.8 billion crowns. “It has not been confirmed that they will be sicker or that they will have diseases that do not occur in our country. They draw less than Czech patients of the same age,” he said at the time.
In total, 460,000 Ukrainian refugees were registered in the Czech Republic, but some of them apparently no longer reside in the Czech Republic. About 362,000 of the incoming refugees are registered with VZP, of which 119,000 are children. According to the executive director of the Association of Health Insurance Companies, Martin Balada, there are around 57,000 registered with the other six smaller health insurance companies, about 20,000 of them received care, which cost on the order of tens of millions of crowns. Eliška Machová's Ministry of Health drew 172,000 refugees. “The costs of this care are on average half that of the Czech population. On average, around 18,000 crowns per Ukrainian insured person,” ČTK reported.
VZP stated in January that 60 percent of refugees registered with it received no care, another 30 percent received care for less than 5,000 crowns, 94 for more than one million crowns. About 700 patients are provided with the so-called center care with the most modern medicines, for example patients with various types of cancer, multiple sclerosis or jaundice type C.
In the cities where there is the greatest concentration of refugees, special clinics have also been established at hospitals , where there were also Ukrainian personnel. The so-called UA points were opened by university hospitals, especially in Prague, Brno and Ostrava, and are also being created in smaller cities. “We followed that up with financial support that goes to regional hospitals,” added Machová. According to her, financial support for 25 surgeries for children and adolescents is also being prepared to increase their capacities.
According to the association, health insurance companies are planning a deficit of 12 billion crowns in the public health insurance system this year. Expected revenues will be CZK 464 billion, 7.4 percent higher than last year. The insurance companies also expected a system deficit in 2021 and 2022, but in reality they managed better. The economy of the largest VZP was balanced, although it originally planned a loss of CZK 5.9 billion.
