At least 24 personnel leasing agencies might be shut down as they haven't properly fulfilled their legal obligations to submit mandatory annual reports on their activities to the Labour Office (UPSVaR) by the end of March, according to the TASR press agency. Licences issued for such agencies may also be revoked for not providing work to even a single person in the previous year, for stating false data in the annual report and for involvement in illegal labour. A total of 338 agencies were required to present their reports. "Nine agencies have sent reports, but they didn't allocate any staff. Ten agencies haven't sent any reports, while five agencies sent them after the deadline," said Labour Office representative Jana Lukáčová. Apart from that, some agencies didn't show evidence for having enough equity (€30,000), while others haven't published their annual accounts and many have also deferred their tax returns.
The Slovak Labour Office began paying more attention to personnel leasing agencies in the wake of a report written by a Serbian journalist in February who worked incognito for three months in allegedly dire conditions at the Samsung plant in Galanta (Trnava region). Officially, close to 6,000 Serbian nationals currently work in Slovakia, most of them via staff leasing agencies. According to Slovak officials, several agencies are attempting to circumvent the legislation in Slovakia by setting up branches in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Romania in order to mediate workers to be sent to Slovakia.
