The high emigration of young people has created a shortage of labor even for the service sector in bars and restaurants.

The representative of the Association of Bars and Restaurants, Enri Jahaj, told Monitor that the lack of labor force is the biggest problem that the sector currently has, especially in the summer months.

In this period, according to Jahaj, the managers of bars and restaurants have turned their eyes to employment from the region.

"It is not expected that this crisis will ever find a solution, as even the implementation of the policy to bring employees from Asian countries turned out to be used by them as a springboard to emigrate to Europe or other countries.

Most of them come with two passports and leave after 1 week, despite the fact that businesses have invested in the arrival of employees, from the labor contracts and the taxes they pay," said Jahaj.

"The Albanian state does not intervene in the solution of these problems, which is again left to the private sector to solve.

Currently, to work in the bars and restaurants of the coast, where the flow is higher than in Tirana, businesses have hired employees from Kosovo, North Macedonia and Montenegro", added Jahaj.

"It is predicted that this will be the only solution for the labor market to function, until even Albanians understand how to work in Germany or Albania at the end of the month without income will remain.

It's just a matter of standards and values", adds Jahaj.

For 2021, bars and restaurants continued to have a negative year.

According to the INSTAT business register data, 854 food and beverage service activities were closed in 2021, with a decrease of 5.2 percent.

There are a total of 15.5 thousand bars in the country, from 22 thousand in 2015, being the second most preferred activity in the country, after the minority business.

The representative of the Association of Bars and Restaurants Enri Jahaj earlier underlined that their closure was affected by the pandemic.

The association warned that the number of closed businesses will increase for this year as well due to the drop in consumption from the general crisis of rising prices and lack of labor force.

"Bars and restaurants were the first to close at the beginning of the pandemic.

The drop in turnover from the quarantine and the restrictions of the economy would certainly give these effects", said Jahaj.

"With the crisis that has plagued and with the increase in the costs of raw materials and the decrease in consumption, there will be other closures of these structures.

Also, the sector is facing another crisis, that of the lack of manpower", added Jahaj.

"Many bar and restaurant entities have a hard time finding new employees.

Even the few employees who are left in the country demand high payments.

This situation will make the activity of these structures even more difficult.

The closures will continue in 2022," Jahaj asserted.

/Monitor/