Business owners in the Algarve tourism sector are complaining of a lack of workers for the summer, despite there being around 6,000 people from the sector registered with the Institute of Employment and Professional Training (IEFP), with some receiving unemployment benefit.

"There were recently 6,000 registered in the area of tourism at the Employment Institute - 500 were cooks. We did an experiment with the Employment Institute, with the help of business associations and Turismo do Algarve, to try to hire people," said the president of the Association of Hotels and Tourist Enterprises of the Algarve (AHETA).

Speaking to Lusa, Hélder Martins said that the IEFP itself took part in the interviews and "made an effort to bring people in, but they didn't want to” accept the work offered to them in their areas and with "good pay".

For the businessman, it is not logical to have a "rejection of people" to work in tourism and, at the same time, they can continue to benefit from unemployment benefit, which leads him to suppose that they will also do some complementary work.

"There were those who could only come for the interview after 8pm, but they were unemployed and receiving unemployment benefit, and others said they were helping a cousin", Hélder Martins further stated.

The president of the region's largest hoteliers' association stressed that "there is a serious problem in the Algarve - and the rest of the country - of a lack of labour," which is not only limited to the tourism sector.

The Pestana group's administrator for the Algarve, Pedro Lopes, also confirmed to Lusa that "it is difficult" to find people to work the same as they did up until 2019.

"The Algarve has 15,000 unemployed, of which 6,000 are in the tourism sector. But when these people are called for interviews and don't show up it's because they don't want to work, and some must be working illegally, so they don't show up," he says.

According to Pedro Lopes, "the few who do go for interviews say that they can only show up after 8pm, which means that they have other priorities".

"The Government has to supervise these situations more. If people don't want to work it is not fair for us to be paying [unemployment benefits], when there are thousands of positions being offered in the sector," he stated.

For his part, the regional operations director of Minor Group, which owns Tivoli hotels, Jorge Beldade, said that the hotel units he manages currently need to recruit 200 people out of a total of around 1,500 workers.

"The Institute of Employment and Professional Training has 15,000 people looking for jobs, but when we ask a group of 30, only three or four show up for the interview, and they do everything they can not to be hired," he said.

According to the official, normally, those interviewed "intend to stay in the unemployment fund and continue doing odd jobs" rather than work full time in the sector.

"We will have the best summer ever, the bookings are already at a higher level than in 2019, the year as a whole will also be excellent, but we cannot provide the level of service that we should be giving due to the lack of workers", he noted.

According to the same official, the concern at the moment, "is no longer the revenue, but finding people who want to work".

The president of AHETA also regretted that "now that there is an opportunity to make money, there are no human resources". He further stressed that businesses will try to maintain the quality of services, even if they have to stop providing all the tables in restaurants, or rooms in hotels.

Entrepreneurs in the tourism sector are unanimous in stating that the solution to solve the lack of labour in the sector is to resort to immigrants, especially those from Portuguese-speaking countries.

According to the Portuguese Hotel Association (AHP), the national labour shortage in the sector is expected to exceed the estimated 15,000 workers by 2021.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the government approved a facilitation scheme for the issuance of visas for Citizens of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (CPLP).