A COMPANY boss plans to travel to Romania to fill jobs which he says local people don’t want.

His comments follow the political row about the lifting of the last curbs on Romanians and Bulgarians seeking work in the UK.

Jason Harris, director of the Ringwood-based IMS Group, says small and medium-sized firms are struggling to fill vacancies.

He said: “It’s unbelievable, with 2.3million unemployed in the UK, of which 970,000 are young unemployed, that I, like other small business owners, am having to look to Eastern Europe to fill vacancies that the UK jobseeker does not seem to want.”

He said he had advertised positions in telesales and marketing in January but had only one applicant.

He blamed the internet and recruitment agencies for much of the problem, saying many job-seekers “just send a CV to a recruitment agency and wait for the phone to ring”.

He said: “The problem is for many of these agencies it’s often more lucrative to look after larger employers as that is where a majority of their income is generated.”

He added: “It’s a great shame when you have a position in a company, opening the door to a great career and a role that pays above the minimum wage and no one applies.

“What do you have to do to obtain new staff?”

Workers from Bulgaria and Romania, which joined the EU in 2007, had faced restrictions on the kind of work they could do in the UK, but those transitional arrangements ended on January 1.

David Cameron has said the numbers from those countries arriving in the UK since January 1 seemed to be at “a reasonable level”.

However, some Conservative MPs want the government’s current Immigration Bill to be amended to keep controls in place until 2018.