ZAGREB, 2 March 2022 - Engineers' pay should be increased by 30 to 50 percent, and in addition to the already imported 30,000 foreign workers, the Croatian construction sector still lacks 20,000 workers, an event marking Croatian Engineers Day was told in Zagreb on Wednesday.
This year's Engineers Day was devoted to long-term plans to make the engineering profession more competitive on both the domestic and global markets. The focus was on untapped national resources and on what the domestic STEM industry can do to put them in the service of sustainable development.
Zdravko Jurčec, head of the Croatian Engineering Association, which organised the event, said that the earthquakes that had struck the country two years ago had shown the importance of having domestic knowledge to deal with such emergencies. "Now we are facing a critical period for economic recovery, which will be a major challenge for the Croatian engineering profession," he said.
"It's regrettable that none of the competent institutions has wondered what the emigration of engineers means, how much this drain of STEM resources has cost us and how to slow or neutralise these unwanted processes," Jurčec said.
He stressed that engineers' pay should be increased by at least 30 to 50 per cent and that in addition to about 30,000 workers already imported, the construction sector still lacked about 20,000 workers.
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