Around 25,000 people in India are waiting for Polish visas with work permits as Poland opens its doors wider to foreign labour, a newspaper has reported.

Polish companies have recruited thousands of workers from India, Nepal and Bangladesh providing them with work permits issued by regional authorities in Poland, the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna daily reported.

There are so many applications that the Polish embassy in New Delhi, India, has been unable to handle them all, according to the newspaper.

"Some of the job seekers have been unsuccessfully trying to register their visa applications for eight months now,” Dziennik Gazeta Prawna said on Monday, adding that, due to staff shortages, only 3,500 visas have been issued since the beginning of the year.

Embassy IT systems are crashing unable to cope with the demand, the paper reported.

Meanwhile, 21 percent of Polish employers say they hire Ukrainian workers, a study has found.

Unemployment in Poland fell to a new low of 5.8 percent in August, from 5.9 percent in July, the country’s labour minister said last week.

According to the European Union's Eurostat statistics agency, which uses a different methodology, unemployment in Poland was a modest 3.8 percent in May, the fourth-lowest rate in the 28-nation bloc.

(gs/pk)

Source: gazetaprawna.pl