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Meeting of cultures in Cartaya
Morocco and Spain declare the AENAS Hiring in the Country of Origin project to be “exemplary” and decide to move further into the process
The Minister of Employment highlighted the high return rates and the need to work together more closely in coming years, while the Spanish Authorities referred to the “excellent result of a cyclical model which allows for temporary working stability”
Cartaya (Huelva), 7th April 2008
The AENEAS–Cartaya project for Ethical Management of Temporary Immigration between Morocco and Spain has this weekend received significant backing from a visit to the area by a top-level delegation from the North African country. The delegation came to check the on-site living and working conditions for the strawberry workers in the Huelvan province, and declared their satisfaction at what the Moroccan Minister of Employment and Professional Training, Jamal Rhmani, deemed a “model which is considered to be exemplary at an international level and one which we must explore more deeply in coming years”.
Meeting in Cartaya
Both the Minister for Employment as well as the Minister for Moroccan Residents Abroad, Mohamed Amour, and the Spanish authorities there, including the Director General for Integration from Central Government, Marta Rodríguez Tarduchi, and the Director General of Migratory Policies from the Autonomous Region of Andalusia, Teresa Bravo, highlighted that a great deal of the formula’s success comes from two factors. These are the high return rate by the Morrocan workers, which last year topped 90%, and the cyclical model which provides temporary working stability to the Moroccan agricultural workers and, claims Jamal Rhmani, “gives work to a significant number of people, this year more than 13,000, through a formula which gives them a job and a decent place to live, as well as the chance to return to Morocco at the end of the agricultural season”.
For the Moroccan Minister, the rate reached this year reflects “the mutual satisfaction of the Moroccan and Spanish partners and demands even closer collaboration in coming years”. The Director General for integration for the Ministry of Social Affairs spoke in the same vein, declaring a wish to reinforce a programme which, in 2003, made it possible to employ 433 people, and which “has been a job well done, not only due to the excellent figures this year, but also, especially, because of the conditions in which these people live and work in Spain”.
Meanwhile, the Mayor of Cartaya and driving force behind the campaign, Juan Antonio Millán, highlighted the need to keep on working on ways to strengthen the model and its extension to other sectors. He therefore showed commitment to continuing with co-development techniques, to improving reception and integration into the host countries, and to keep on working on the linking of harvesting campaigns, “so that a Moroccan worker who comes to cover the lack of “home-grown” agricultural workers can come, if they and the employers so wish, to the grape harvest in La Mancha, then on to the olive harvest in Jaén, and from there to the strawberries in Huelva, for example; so there should be a network of decent living areas and systems equivalent to AENEAS-Cartaya to receive them”. The first Town Councillor also mentioned the importance of strengthening cooperation between the Banca Popular of Morocco and the Banks and Building Societies in Spain “so that deposits for workers get to Morocco at zero cost and immediately, guaranteeing that money can be re-invested in co-development”.
Millán pointed out that the success of the formula used in Huelva is due, on the one hand, to the mutual interest of the Spanish and Moroccan governments and, on the other, to the strawberry workers in the province. The President of Freshuelva, José Manuel Romero, highlighted the need to insist on professional training for Moroccan workers in their cities of origin. “They should come to Spain adequately trained and prepared” and confirmed that work is being done with INEM to achieve these aims.
Along the same lines, the Mayor of Cartaya touched again on the training given in Huelva within the framework of the AENEAS-Cartaya project, and also had words of praise for the National Agency for the Promotion of Employment and Skills, Anapec, for their “important collaboration, especially in the selection process, in which they’ve been highly successful with the profiles required by businesses”.
Meeting in Cartaya
The working day concluded with a visit to the Office of Temporary Workers, the AENEAS building – Cartaya, and to the living quarters on one of the sites in the area, Citroluz, and the hostel Casa del Gato, where the Aljahita authorities were able to check the living and working conditions of the Moroccans hired in their home towns and brought to Huelva.