Rubite, which is about 17 km above Castell de Ferro, had no unemployed amongst its 450 inhabitants, but things changed, because now there are 43 people officially registered as unemployed, most of whom come from the construction trade.

When you’re dealing with a village as small as Rubite, then 43 unemployed is a high number, all with a face and name, rather than being simply a statistic, which is why the Village Council has decided to spend a government grant, which was to be spent on making the entrance to the village more pleasing to the eye, on putting 21,000 sq/m of soil under plastic and give the unemployed a job in the network of municipal greenhouses.

Remarkably, all the political parties represented in the Village Council agree with this move, because, as the Mayor, Arsenio Vazquez, points out, when you take the retired and minors of the village population out of the equation, the unemployed ratio is quite high.

The 43 unemployed won’t be employed all at the same time, because there aren’t enough posts for that, but on a 6-month, rotational basis, all of them can bring some money into their household budgets.

“After all, sprucing up the entrance to the village can wait; the welfare of our inhabitants can’t,” explained the Mayor.

Curiously, the Mayor says that the idea came to him when he observed that the most well off members of the community had greenhouse businesses, so, he reasoned, what better way to give employment to all. The question is, of course, how do these original farmers feel about this trade competition from the public sector, financed with their own taxes? Another sticking point might be the availability of water – have they taken this into consideration? One imagines that they have.

The grant that the village has is for 176,000 euros, but the Mayor calculates that they will need another 100,000 euros to get it ‘up and running,’ so as well as requesting permission from the Junta to redirect the 176,000 for this new project, they are also asking for a financial support from the Junta for the necessary 100,000 euros.

Finally, the Mayor realises that such a scheme on a large scale – let’s say for Motril, for example – is not practical, but for a village the size of Rubite, whose agriculture is greenhouse-based anyway, it should not only provide salaries for the unemployed, but if God willing, it turns a profit, the said money could be put into any other municipal project.

(News: Rubite, Costa Tropical East, Granada, Andalucia)