Ballinasloe employer’s job offer for Ukrainian refugees

A major Ballinasloe employer has urged homeowners in the town to offer up properties to Ukrainians – so that he can give jobs to those who wish to work while they seek refuge here.

Western Automation owner Pat Ward said he could help up to three Ukrainian families settle in the area by offering employment in his business, which provides products and technologies for protection against electric shock and electrical faults.

But the promise was meaningless unless suitable accommodation could be found.

“Housing is the key. Everything else is easy. It’s putting the cart before the horse,” he opined.

“My feeling is if we could get people in the Ballinasloe area to offer a room, lodgings or a house for single people or families we could get them quickly settled by organising employment and help them live a meaningful life here and give them a purpose for life instead of just being on social welfare while they wait for things to turn around.”

The entrepreneur said the company would be willing to make a contribution towards the accommodation for up to a year if that helped free up housing.

“If it’s a family, we’d need sufficient room for children, but we could also be talking about single people or couples that may be happy to live in lodgings or a room in a house. This is about sequencing. There’s no point in contacting the Red Cross about jobs and building up hopes only to have them dashed again because we couldn’t find accommodation.”

His business employs people with many skill sets, including mechanical and electrical engineers as well as people on a production line, quality controllers and people involved in sales and marketing.

“We could always provide training if necessary if they happened to be weak in one area. It’s not necessarily about having only engineers.”

The company employs 40 people in Ballinasloe and a further ten in Spain with some workers engaged in the research and development element of the business.

Read the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now – or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie