TWENTY FIVE YEARS AGO Friday May 22, 1998
Fewer Wee Toon jobs
Campbeltown is being hit harder by rising unemployment than anywhere else in the Highlands and islands.
Shock figures released this week from the employment department reveal that Campbeltown is the only travel to work area in the Highlands and islands to be suffering from an increase in unemployment.
Unemployment in every other travel to work area fell from March 1997 to March 1998, and in Campbeltown it rose by a staggering 9.2 per cent.
Last March, there were 415 people registered unemployed and in March 1998 that rose to 453.
Yet in the Highlands and islands as a whole, unemployment has dropped by an average of 13 per cent and over Scotland by an average of 16.1 per cent.
The statistics were greeted with great concern by Ken Abernethy, chief executive of Argyll and Isles Enterprise.
“It is a cause of major concern,” said Mr Abernethy. “We are very concerned about the level and the trending unemployment and also its composition.
“There is a very high level of long-term unemployment in the area.”
The addition of 38 more unemployed people in the Campbeltown travel to work area has made it the second highest area of unemployment in the Highlands and Islands region. It now has an unemployment rate of 9.7 per cent as compared with an Argyll and Bute average of 6.6 per cent and the Scottish average of 5.9 per cent.
Although recent developments such as the introduction of the Irish ferry have improved matters, more improvements are still needed.
“We do believe that the ferry has produced a stimulus to the economy but that’s not enough on its own,” added Mr Abernethy, “and we are seeking to modernise the business base of the area through inward investment.
“But there is still a lot more work to be done in Kintyre.”
The worst area for unemployment in the Highlands and islands is currently the Sutherland travel to work area where the March figure was 12.7 per cent.