Can we have our workers back, please!
Come and settle in Wroclaw – billboards like this are to be displayed in London and other British cities in coming weeks with a view to attracting young Poles to seek their career opportunities there instead of in the UK.
Some 200,000 Poles have found legal employment in the UK over the past two years. Not all of them of course work in the field in which they have been trained and there are many cases of university graduates washing the dishes in restaurants.
There are also many people who’ve made professional careers in the London City but eager to return to Poland for family reasons for example. It is to such people that the city of authorities of Wroclaw have addressed their campaign. Even though the unemployment rate in the city is around 10 percent, the current investment boom has created a shortage of highly-skilled personnel in some fields.
Krzysztof Adamus of the Wroclaw branch of the recruitment company Adecco Poland says the campaign is a very good idea.
‘Most of these people were abroad because they couldn’t find a job here. At this time, Poland can offer them employment opportunities, so this is a very good idea of the city authorities of Wrocław. These people gained much experience in London and they should have no problem in finding jobs in Wrocław.”
The Polish National Tourist Office in London is one of Wroclaw’s partner organizations in the campaign. Ewa Binkin told me she’s confident that many Poles now living in the UK will be returning to Poland in near future.
‘I’m absolutely certain that this influx of Poles coming to Britain is tempoirary. It will not last long. These people are very highly educated and they realize that the opportunities in Britain are only to enhance their chances when they return to Poland. I’m sure that if the Polish economy continues growing they will be coming back to Poland’.
On September 10, a big festival is to be organized in the London district of Ealing, where some 30 thousand Poles live at the moment, within the framework of the campaign. For the Polish National Tourist Office in London it will also be an opportunity to promote Wroclaw among the British public
‘…as one of the most beautiful tourist destinations in Poland. We want the British people to come to Poland, to Wroclaw, to take part in newly-emerging tourist such as medical tourism. We hope this will increase employment in Poland and make Wroclaw more popular’.
The ‘Come to Wroclaw’ campaign is also targeted at the Polish community in Ireland which is estimated at some 80,000 are legally working and maybe 120,000 are unregistered.
Report by Michal Kubicki