With less than a fortnight until the end of the annual 200 jobs in 100 days campaign, Westvic's chief is confident the employment target will be met.
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Westvic Staffing Solutions chief executive officer Dean Luciani said 163 people had been employed since this year's campaign began in November.
"It's just wonderful for the region," Mr Luciani said. "One thing that a lot of regional communities don't have is a youth employment and retention strategy and that's exactly what this is. If you look at the last four years of this campaign we've employed in the vicinity of 700 apprentices and trainees."
Mr Luciani said the apprenticeships and traineeships which had been created would last between 12 and 48 months and covered dozens of trades and vocations.
He said it was a team effort between large organisations as well as small to medium-sized businesses, schools and community and the campaign had had great support.
Locations where jobs have been created include smaller centres such as Camperdown, Timboon, Mortlake, Port Fairy, Grassmere, Heywood, Koroit and Cobden as well as Warrnambool, Portland, Hamilton and Colac.
"They're kids who have predominately made the transition from school into the local south-west workforce," he said. "It's a testament to the community and how they've pulled together."
He said despite the region's low overall unemployment rate, the youth unemployment rates still hovered between 7 and 7.5 per cent.
"It's well under the national average and half of what it was when we started this but there's still work for everyone to do," Mr Luciani said.
"We can't be complacent about having opportunities for our young people and early intervention is the key. I don't believe in waiting until someone's been on the unemployment list for six months. When you make that transition from school to work it's really a time-sensitive issue."
Mr Luciani said they worked with secondary schools in the region to help assist year 11 and 12 students to make good career choices. "I congratulate them. They play a huge role in preparing kids for the workforce and they work closely with us to allow us to do that. It's not just the employers. It's everybody. I couldn't be happier. It's just fantastic.
"They're educators yes, but they also have a key role to play to prepare people for the workforce and they're all key partners that we have to make all this happen."
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