ZAGREB, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) -- In 2021, Croatia will continue to provide support to employees of companies that are in crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the country's government decided on Thursday.
Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said at a government session that the goal is to preserve every job, so in January and February 4,000 Croatian kuna (650 U.S. dollars) will continue to be paid to each employee in companies whose turnover has dropped significantly.
The government has earmarked 1.2 billion kuna to fund an active employment policy next year.
An update is also in the pipeline for part-time measures for all those employers who, due to objective circumstances, cannot fully engage their workers.
To date, the state has paid 7.7 billion kuna for the salaries of 600,000 workers in 100,000 private companies.
In the past 24 hours, 3,918 new coronavirus cases and 85 deaths have been confirmed in Croatia, the Croatian Institute of Public Health said.
Since Feb. 25, when the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in the country, over 180,000 people have been infected with coronavirus, and 2,955 of them have died.
As the world is struggling to control the pandemic, countries across the globe -- among them Germany, China, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States -- are racing to find a reliable vaccine. The UK and the U.S. have started emergency vaccination to curb the spike in new infections.
During his first live appearance at the government session after testing positive for COVID-19 in late November, Plenkovic noted that Croatia had ordered 5.6 million vaccine doses from various manufacturers and that the first shipments are expected to arrive in the country in January after the European Medicines Agency's approval. He said that vaccination will be free and voluntary. (1 U.S. dollar = 6.15 kuna) Enditem