More than 10,000 Job Seekers Attend
Savannah River Site Recovery Act Job Fairs
(Aiken, SC) -- More than 10,000 South Carolina and Georgia residents have participated in four job fairs hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Savannah River Site (SRS). The most recent job fair, held on July 7th in Aiken, drew an estimated 4,300 people.
"The purpose of the act at the site is two-fold," said Jeffrey M. Allison, manager of the DOE's Savannah River Operations Office. "First, it creates jobs. The tremendous turn out of people attending these job fairs proves that the Recovery Act is working by giving opportunities for employment to so many people in search of jobs. The Recovery Act will also accelerate the environmental clean up of SRS. This is important work that is needed. Ultimately, we will be saving taxpayers about a billion dollars in cleaning up these environmental issues now at SRS instead of waiting until later."
About 3,000 jobs will be retained or created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding for SRS through 2011. While the jobs are not permanent, the more than $1.6 billion allocation authorized for SRS earlier this year will help many who are now unemployed and support small businesses in the Central Savannah River Area. Job fairs and town hall meetings, held in Columbia, Barnwell, Allendale and Aiken over the past month have successively grown in attendance (from about 1,500 in Columbia to the 4,300 attending the Aiken event). The attendance at the job fairs point to the need for jobs and the the Obama Adminstration's proactive effort to kick-start the economy. "I have a lump in my throat when I see the number of people looking for jobs at these events," Allison said.
"We are at the forefront of getting people back to work and we are proud of that," explained Chuck Munns, president and chief executive officer of Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), LLC, the management and operating company at the Site. "We are processing between 75 to100 new hires a week; more than 10,000 resumes have been collected and we are safely addressing some of the Site's most important environmental challenges."
Munns went on to say that the new jobs are broken down into one-third special nuclear-related skills, one-third construction and related trade skilled positions and one-third general support positions.
For Allendale County, with a 22.1-percent unemployment rate, the highest in the state, the ARRA job fair was tangible hope that employment might be on the horizon and that at least some of those in attendance might indeed have a job this summer.
Steve Joubert, one of more than 2,000 job applicants, discusses his job qualifications with Alyson Hutson, a representative from SRNS, at the Barnwell Job Fair.
