Finland's Ovi

Helsinki, Espoo, and Vantaa have found nearly 50 buildings which could serve as accommodation for the long-term homeless.

If all of the plans are carried out, more than 2,000 new “support apartments” and treatment spots could be set up for the homeless in the Helsinki region.

The aim is to set up at least 1,000 of them by 2011.

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FEANTSA (European Federation of National Organisations ) says that a obvious cause of the high housing costs is that housing production and housing policy are basically dependent on the market. The share of social rental housing is small, only some 15 per cent of the housing stock. Contrary to many other sectors of the welfare society, housing provision mainly relies on the free market. Single persons in particular encounter difficulties in finding reasonably priced rental dwellings.

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Nearly 30 possible locations were found in Helsinki with more than 1,600 apartments or treatment spaces.

This spring, authorities will pick which of the locations are to be developed further.
Finland has thousands of people without a fixed abode. Of them, 2,500 live in the Helsinki region.

The effort among the cities in the Greater Helsinki region to find special housing is part of a programme launched by Minister of Housing Jan Vapaavuori (Nat. Coalition Party) to reduce long-term homelessness.

Cutting the homelessness rate in half by 2011 would require 1,250 units of support housing and treatment, at an estimated costs of more than EUR 200 million.

The state plans to spend a lot of money on the project in the next four years, and the cities are expected to pay an equal amount.

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Article on Environment.fi says that a separate programme designed to reduce homelessness in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area was finalised in 2002 for the period 2002-2005, involving the construction and acquisition of four thousand homes a year and measures to ensure the provision of the necessary housing services and support.

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In order to alleviate the growing shortage of labour in certain branches in Finland, some companies have begun to use the recruitment services of advertising and communications agencies. The idea is to use consultants in order to improve the company image or to actually recruit new employees for the business.

Fazer, one of the largest corporations in the Finnish food and confectionery industry, is suffering from an acute shortage of labour. On Tuesday, the company offered bread and vacancies to passers-by at Helsinki’s Kamppi Center.

Those who were interested could complete an electronic application in a few minutes, informing Fazer of their competence.

Fazer had planned the event in cooperation with the GCI Finland communications agency. Within around 90 minutes, people on their way to work picked up a total of 2,400 sandwiches to go. For those who stopped at the stand, even other kinds of finger food were available.
The Fazer Group’s Finnish operations comprise the Fazer Amica catering services, Fazer bakeries, and the Candyking confectionery “shop-in-shop” concept. In total, they employ approximately 6,300 people.

The demand for new employees is great, particularly at Fazer Amica, as some 60 to 70 per cent of their present workforce will retire by 2015.

At present, Fazer has some 50 to 60 vacancies. The estimated number of the applications filled in at the Kamppi recruitment event was a couple of hundred. The campaign by Fazer also included an internet page, showing a woman “interviewing” an applicant, which was expected to appeal particularly to young people.

Teija Andersen, the Managing Director of Fazer Amica, believes that this is the right trend, while saying that there is still much to be done in terms of marketing. Many other Finnish companies find themselves in a similar situation, while not being willing to announce it publicly. They fear that they might be regarded as losers who are not even able to persuade people to work for them.

Nevertheless, they should recognise that they cannot leave it too long before they step in to the recruitment game: this week’s recruitment stunt may work, but sooner or later the public will tire of such things and ignore them.

In addition to public exercises using advertising and public relations firms, some companies are looking at directed searches via such online communities as Facebook or LinkedIn.

Other firms, despairing of ever finding the right people to fill vacancies from Finland, are turning their eyes abroad: professionals in the construction, metals, and HVAC trades are being sought from nearby countries, while there are efforts to secure the return of Finnish nurses from Sweden, Norway, and the UK.

Source: Helsingin Sanomat

Following a probe published by Helsingin Sanomat towards the end of August, Minister of the Interior Anne Holmlund (National Coalition Party) wanted to clear up whether or not Thai massage parlours in Helsinki are hosting criminal activities.

The newspaper’s report suggested that sex services are freely available at all parlours offering Thai massage in Helsinki.

Based on a detailed investigation into the capital’s Thai massage businesses, the Helsinki Police Department published its own report on Tuesday, confirming that sex services are indeed generally offered at all Thai massage parlours in the city.

Moreover, the special inquiry by police implied that there are individuals behind at least some of the businesses offering Thai massage who are responsible for the operation in several localities.

However, the Helsinki Police Department did not find any evidence that would point to human trafficking or professional operation. Hence there was no reason to launch any preliminary investigations for the time being.

Chief Police Inspector Matti Rinne from the Ministry of the Interior reports that in other parts of Finland there are areas where local police departments are in fact preparing preliminary inquiries into Thai massage businesses.
According to the police, there are some 200 Thai massage parlours in Finland, 54 of them located in Helsinki.

Anne Holmlund supports the view expressed by the police that cross-administrative investigations should be launched into the operations of those parlours where evidence points to some illegal activities. Such investigations should combine the efforts of the police, the Tax Administration, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of the Interior, the Directorate of Immigration, and the Finnish occupational safety districts.

“Such a project, conducted by public authorities, could bring us new information in order that we would possibly be able to launch a preliminary inquiry into the matter”, noted Police Commissioner Jukka Riikonen from the Helsinki Police Department. The police wish to take a role in the proceedings, but are not eager to be the main or only player.

The report indicated further that there is reason to suspect many Thai massage parlours in Finland of procurement, tax fraud, and accounting offences.
Human trafficking is not among those offences of which the Finnish Thai massage parlours are being suspected, as according to the interviews with the National Bureau of Investigation, the masseuses have been free to move from one place to another independently. Moreover, the offering of sex services has been voluntary.

“It is also worth noting that even though the official bookkeeping of the parlours show that their turnover is low, the number of such massage places is growing steadily”, says Matti Rinne.
As the results of the special investigation suggest that the businesses offering Thai massage must be profitable at least to some extent, the police are suspecting some Thai massage parlours of tax fraud and accounting offences.

When Helsingin Sanomat tested 30 Thai massage parlours in August, a receipt was given only in one place.

The Minister of the Interior is now calling for opportunities for the Thai masseuses to have alternative options to earn their living.

Source: Helsingin Sanomat

According to police statistics, young females have become increasingly violent in recent years. A growing number of under-21-year-old women and girls are being suspected of assaults in Finland.

Ten years ago the annual number of women charged with assault was 700, while the corresponding figure for 2006 was already as high as 1,300. Of all under-21-year-old suspects the proportion of girls is today 22 per cent.

Dr. Ghitta Weizmann-Henelius, a psychologist at the Vanha Vaasa state mental hospital, whose doctoral thesis in psychology dealt with violent female offenders in Finland, is predicting that the increase in the violent behaviour of girls will be seen in Finnish criminal statistics in the course of the next few years.

The use of intoxicants has also been found to increase violence among females, and today, women are frequently found guilty of similar types of aggressive behvious to those shown in men.

Currently, the proportion of violent incidents that involve a woman as the perpetrator is about 13 per cent, and similarly in homicides it is around 10 per cent of all cases. The number of women serving time in prison in Finland is roughly 250, while the total prison population in the country is around 3,500.

An increasing number of female prisoners have a history of violent criminality and personality disorders, including substance abuse, reported Weizmann-Henelius. She has examined the personality, background characteristics and life events of women guilty of violent offences, who are being kept either in prison or in a forensic psychiatric hospital.

Based on the follow-up made by Weizmann-Henelius, some 95 per cent of those offenders who had a record of previous crimes were also found guilty of further offences after the time of study. In other words, criminal acts apparently tend to accumulate on the same individuals.

The violent acts committed by women have also become more brutal, involving knives, bottles, or stones. Frequently incidents also involve more than just one perpetrator. Even motives appear to be similar to those of men, and offences are often linked with revenge and drug traffic.

Apart of substance abuse, many females guilty of violent crimes have a background of childhood problems, including the parents’ divorce or domestic violence, frequently even sexual abuse, the psychologist noted.

The study indicates further that violent female offenders are most often single or divorced and unemployed. Typically, violent female offenders often have a history of suicide attempts and psychiatric treatment.

“According to some studies, women’s violence against their live-in companions is as common as that inflicted by men on women. However, the violence used by men is often more severe”, Weizmann-Henelius concludes.

Source: Helsingin Sanomat

By Terhi Kinnunen

Next time you complain about waiting in a queue, spare a thought for Pavel.

He has parked his truck in a line stretching for 5 km (3 miles) — and this is a good day at the Finnish-Russian border.

Russia’s economy is booming and its hunger for new cars, televisions and machinery means the transit routes through Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are clogged with trucks.

Because of this surging trans-border traffic, Finland is now as large a trading partner for Russia as the United States, but customs posts on the border are struggling to cope.

Pavel makes a return trip to Finland once a week: this time it was with a truck full of electronic equipment for Moscow.

Two weeks ago he spent 48 hours waiting to get back home. Last winter the queues stretched for more than 60 km.

While the vehicles are stuck at the border, retailers in Russia and the transport firms are losing money and local people are scared to drive on the roads with one lane blocked by trucks.

The Finns blame the Russians for the queues which are also a problem in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. “Last year we had queues on 300 days,” said Mika Poutiainen, head of Finnish customs at Vaalimaa, 186 km east of Helsinki.

Vaalimaa is Finland’s busiest border crossing to Russia, dealing with 700-800 trucks a day. Poutiainen says Finnish customs could double the amount of trucks that pass through because processing export papers takes only a couple of minutes.

“But because of the different kinds of procedures … the limit is set by the Russian side,” he said.

Russians prefer to import goods through Finland because Russian harbors near St Petersburg do not have enough unloading equipment or warehouses, and to minimize theft.

CROSSING POINTS

The amount of goods imported through Finland has doubled since 2002 to about 3 million tonnes in 2006 and Russia’s transport ministry admits its officials cannot handle the growing number of vehicles.

“Crossing points cannot manage as they are not big enough,” a ministry spokeswoman said. Finland’s transport minister says Russia could do more.

“They have promised to cut the number of officials (at the border) from seven to two. And they should also increase the number of staff,” Anu Vehvilainen said.

Russia’s relations with some of its nearest neighbors, especially from the former Soviet Union, have deteriorated lately amid mutual recriminations. Russia cut oil supplies and rail links to Estonia in a row over the relocation of a Soviet war memorial in the capital Talinn.

Finnish President Tarja Halonen, who met Russia’s Vladimir Putin at the end of September, said Russia had made decisions that would help improve border traffic but had not carried them out fully.

Earlier this month the prime ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania called for Brussels to raise the problems at border crossings at the next EU-Russia Summit.

Latvia has queues of between 700 and 1,000 trucks regularly waiting at the two main crossing points to Russia, and processing takes between 60 and 72 hours. Last month trucks stood in a queue for more than a week in Estonia.

The situation in Latvia got so bad that in April a local region declared a state of emergency to draw central government’s attention to its infrastructure needs.

FUMES AND TRASH

People living near the border crossings are fed up with the exhaust fumes, feces and trash. “There are always bottles and cans,” said Tuomo Nurkka, who lives near the Nuijamaa border crossing in Lappeenranta, 247 km northeast of Helsinki.

“Trucks are standing in one lane and other traffic is using the other lane. It makes life interesting. It is dangerous especially in winter time and when the roads are icy.”

Poutiainen said electronic customs declaration would put an end to the queues.

“We don’t have the electronic declaration because the agreement would have to be made between the European Union and Russia, not between Finland and Russia. On the EU level we are still in talks to solve this problem.”

The Finnish government has raised the issue in the EU, minister Vehvilainen said.

However, it does not expect the problem to be solved anytime soon and has put aside 24 million euros ($34 million) to build a new waiting area for the trucks.
Source: Reuters
(Additional reporting by Sakari Suoninen and Tarmo Virki in Helsinki, Patrick Lannin in Riga)

Finnish literature is set to make a notable splash on the German book market in 2011. Finland is in the process of filing an official application to become the theme country of the world’s most prominent literature trade fair, the Frankfurt Book Fair, in four years’ time. Finland’s Minister of Culture Stefan Wallin (Swedish People’s Party) is likely to sign the application already this week.

“The plan is to send our letter of intention to the Frankfurt Book Fair already today or tomorrow. This is an opportunity worth seizing – especially after the organisers of the fair have practically demanded that Finland apply for the guest of honour position for 2011″, Wallin confirms.
Being the guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair will be the largest-ever single effort to export Finnish culture.

As yet, no exact figures are available, but presumably Finland’s investment in the undertaking will be in the region of EUR five million. The Frankfurt Book Fair organisation has in several instances emphasised that with a EUR 4-4.5 million investment, a theme region can obtain sufficient publicity.

“It is too early to speculate about the cost of being the guest of honour. First we have to wait for an acknowledgement from Frankfurt. Obviously, at least the Ministry of Education, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Trade and Industry will then take part in the effort”, Wallin says.

But money alone does not guarantee success at the fair. With the smallest-ever budget of a mere EUR 1.5 million, Lithuania failed to produce a breakthrough in the international book market. But then again, so did South Korea, in spite of its whopping EUR 14.5 million investment in the fair.
According to Wallin, the undertaking would coincide perfectly with the south-western city of Turku’s turn as European Capital of Culture in 2011.

At present, around 30-40 Finnish books are translated into German each year. Should Finland succeed in becoming the Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair, this figure could increase many times over.

Source: Helsingin Sanomat

Sparkling wines, champagnes and rosé gaining in popularity
 
According to figures published on Wednesday by the National Product Control Agency for Welfare and Health (STTV), sales of alcohol grew in the months from January to July of this year by just over 4 per cent, or by 3.2% when measured in terms of 100% ethanol.

Aggregate sales in Finland via Alko off-licences, stores, and at licensed restaurants and bars came to more than 26 million litres of 100% alcohol. The actual figure was over 376 million litres by volume.
Sales have increased from one record to the next for some years now.

In fact the latest figures should be seen rather as a measure of the period from January to June, as the cooler weather in July of this year actually prompted sales for the month to fall slightly. Figures for August are not yet available.
Sales of wines, champagnes, and coolers showed the strongest growth, putting on 8%. Correspondingly, sales of fortified wines and vermouths were down by almost 7.5%.

The big favourites in the early part of the year were sparkling wines and champagnes, as well as rosé and blush wines.

The surge in sales of sparkling wines began at the beginning of last year, and is thought to have been fuelled in part by the spate of 60th birthday celebrations of people in the baby-boomer generation.

This explanation probably still holds, as only a few weeks back we witnessed the largest cluster of births that took place 60 years ago.
Sales of beers and distilled items (spirits) each grew by some 3 per cent in the opening seven months of the year.

Sales of ales (rather than lagers) were up by 13 per cent on the previous year, while on the spirits side it was liqueurs that showed the greatest growth, up by 8%.

The general trend leans towards greater sales of milder drinks, but with an overall increase of such dimensions, sales of spirits also rose.
At the same time, it is believed that the year-long decline in imports by passengers (particularly from Estonia) has stopped, and hence overall Finnish consumption of alcohol has continued to increase substantially.

In the wake of the government’s decision to cut alcohol taxes - particularly on spirits - some years ago, imports declined measurably. With plans on the table for increases in alcohol duty in 2008, it remains to be seen whether imports for personal use will once again rise.

Source: Helsingin Sanomat

Finnish public hospitals are making preparations for coping with the planned mass resignations of care personnel affiliated with the Union of Health and Social Care Professionals (Tehy).

On Tuesday, Tehy announced that it was planning to have its members resign en masse as a way of promoting their pay demands.

Under the law, in the event of a strike, a certain number of nurses can be required to stay at work to maintain basic services. Under a mass resignation there would be no such obligation. However, the tactic is not without risks: the management side would be under no obligation to rehire those who had resigned.

Tehy is convinced that a combination of solidarity among union members and the shortage of nurses in Finland are a sufficient guarantee that those taking part in the mass resignation action will not end up unemployed.
The Helsinki and Uusimaa Hospital District (HUS) is planning to recruit substitutes and to hire private nursing services, but officials are admitting that such moves would not be enough.

“They would be marginal measures”, said Kari Nenonen, managing director of HUS on Wednesday.

MedOne, a temp agency for medical personnel, says that it would not force its nurses to work as strike breakers. According to MedOne CEO Pertti Karjalainen, his company “respects the industrial action”.

For instance, at the Kuopio University Central Hospital, Tehy has hinted at the possibility that about 200 nurses would quit their jobs. According to head physician Jorma Penttinen, about one third of the activities of the hospital would have to to shut down in such an event.
If the stoppage begins, non-urgent surgeries will be reduced and postponed, there will be more mobility within the hospitals among staff who still are at work, and doctors and practical nurses will be doing more work.

The most crucial sectors are emergency duty, paediatrics, oncology, and maternity.

“I hope that the action is over when I come to have my baby. There might be a bit of a panic if a midwife were running around in 15 delivery rooms”, says Terhi Mutka, who is in her 35th week of pregnancy, during a checkup at the Kätilöopistio Maternity Hospital in Helsinki.
Tehy has promised to limit the mass resignations to large university hospitals and central hospitals, and will not extend to municipal health centres.

Source : Helsingin Sanomat

By Sharon Cotal

Three teachers who taught fifth grade at Highlands Elementary School last year have been selected by Microsoft to serve as ambassadors to a teaching forum in Helsinki, Finland.

Highland teachers Bonita DeAmicis and Cindy Hallman, and Amy Panama - now a fourth-grade teacher at Mountain View Elementary - were selected from a national pool of candidates to participate in the 2007 Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum taking place Oct. 29-31.

“We are very excited about it. We’re just a little concerned about having warm clothing,” said DeAmicis, who plans to borrow some cold weather gear from her sister in Colorado.

The forum is designed to recognize and reward outstanding educators and allow them to collaborate and share their expertise. When they worked together last year, DeAmicis, Hallman and Panama incorporated the use of handheld computers, interactive whiteboards, the Internet and desktop software in a series of science stations where students worked in teams to learn about the human body.

The teachers’ use of technology in the learning process and the way they worked together to develop the stations got Microsoft’s attention.

“They liked it. They were very excited that we were able to create seamless ways to integrate technology into our teaching. But the technology was not the focus of the learning - it was used as a tool to learn about the human body,” DeAmicis said.

The trio of teachers were also one of 20 learning teams selected to attend the United States Forum, held Sept. 26-28 in Seattle. The trip took Hallman back into familiar territory.

“I grew up in Seattle, so it was fun to see my family and I enjoyed seeing Seattle again,” Hallman said.

In Seattle, the teachers experienced the teacher version of speed dating, with teams spending five minutes with one another discussing their projects.

“They called it networking, but essentially we steal ideas from each other,” Hallman said. “It was great to get ideas from teachers across the U.S. that we probably otherwise would never meet.”

Panama, at 25 the youngest of the group, said she is honored to be selected for such a prestigious event at the beginning of her career and looks forward to meeting with the teams from other countries in Helsinki.

“It’s a lot of work to prepare to go, and I’m going to miss my students, but I’m very excited to go,” Panama said. “I can only imagine the different teams we will meet there.”

At the Helsinki forum, the three local teachers will be competing with teams from 70 countries and international judges will select one winner from all the projects presented.

“It’s like a science fair for teachers,” DeAmicis said. The teachers have been working on their display, getting it ready for the international competition.

“I’m very competitive, so game’s on,” Hallman said. For Hallman, the trip to Helsinki will be kind of like a trip home.

“My grandfather was 100 percent Finnish. I never dreamed I would go to Finland, but that’s where my ancestors are from,” Hallman said.

DeAmicis plans to do some sightseeing while in Helsinki and hopes to see the Northern Lights.

“Hopefully we’ll be able to walk around the city and see some sights,” DeAmicis said.

Panama is looking forward to spending time with the two teachers she used to work with at Highlands.

“Obviously, we won an award for collaboration, so we really worked well together,” Panama said. “Mountain View has really welcomed me, but it was hard to leave.”

Source:The Signal

(HS) The condition of lorries arriving in Finland across the country’s eastern has improved significantly. According to Finnish police, the quality of vehicles used by foreign haulage companies is getting to be close to that of Finnish trucks.

Finland’s Traffic Police have been closely scrutinising the condition of heavy goods vehicles in the southeast of Finland this week. According to police superintendent Jouni Ryhänen, the director of the campaign, the foreign vehicles are no longer in any worse shape than those owned and driven by Finns.

“Competition works. In some cases, the vehicles are even better than what the Finns have”, Ryhänen says.

Most of the foreign trucks are Russian.
During the crackdown, the police plan to inspect thoroughly more than 100 domestic and foreign lorry-trailer combinations. On the first day, 64 vehicles were inspected, and 36 drivers were given fines or warnings.

Jari Strengell of the traffic police in the Kymeenlaakso region says that in spite of the high proportion of vehicles with shortcomings, there is no reason for other motorists to worry too much. He said that a great many of the problems involved minor issues such as faulty lights, which do not necessarily have immediate serious implications for traffic safety.

During the week only one vehicle was not allowed to continue on its way: the brakes of the trailer on a Finnish lorry did not work at all, and the vehicle was left on the side of the road.
On Thursday, inspections focused on the Port of Hamina, where the violations that were found were mostly minor.

There were exceptions, however: One Russian driver en route from the harbour to the Russian border had failed to secure his load of 900 kg. paper rolls in the trailer. If the lorry had been stopped on the road, the police would have confiscated the driver’s licence without further ado.

“If something like that were on the road, it would be considered serious negligence”, Jouni Ryhänen says.

There have been news reports recently of drink driving by Russian drivers. Six drivers have been stopped for driving under the influence within a few weeks.

Strengell says that Russian traffic discipline is not particularly lax: considering the vast growth in truck of traffic, these kinds of cases are quite rare.

“Most of them are all right - no different from the Finns. But there are always these bad apples that cause everyone problems”, he says.

“Laughter is the core of well-being”, says city’s personnel chief
 
By Irja Hyvärinen

Four red-nosed figures waddle into the personnel cafe of the City of Tampere. A performance of the city clowns is about to begin, and one of them is already praising a diner for his choice of the Tampere speciality, black pudding.

When the pot belly, the jacket suit lady, the dancer, and the bus driver start into their workplace well-being rap, even administrative chief Mauri Eskonen smiles behind his plate. “Process, report, delegate, visualise”: the list of words sounds so absurd (especially as in the original Finnish, as they all rhyme).

The idea for the city clowns came from comedian Mona Ratalahti, occupational well-being trainer Riitta Harilo, and its godmother was Kirsi Koski, head of the Mayor’s office.

Koski has worked as the city’s head of personnel for three years.

“I have thought about what would be the core of well-being. Yes, it is laughter”, Koski says. “It is all right to laugh at craziness - at what is not said out loud in business discussions.”

Ratalahti feels that a clown nose “changes us and the viewer in such a way that forces people to look at things differently”.

“When people enjoy their work, it is reflected directly on the bottom line.”
Tampere’s city clowns are the 41st idea that the “Creative Tampere” programme has decided to support. The programme has a budget of EUR 12 million to back corporate ideas worthy of development.

The EUR 25,000 earmarked for the clowns makes it possible for four artists, who have mostly worked alone, can concentrate on joint projects.

Some of the funding is used for the purchase of performances for training seminars, for instance.

Head of development Lasse Paananen says that the funding is not a question of moving money from one municipal pocket to another, but rather a startup for a new enterprise.

The city clowns have a number of established routines, from “The ABCs of Customer Service”, to “Lightening the Guilt Pack”. One planned sketch involves a training session for supervisors on how to effectively put subordinates in their place.
Each of the clowns have created their own characters. Ratalahti is a pot-bellied boss, Harilo is a jacket-suit lady. Tuula Linnusmäki is a dancer whose workplace calisthenics putts the meat on the move.

When tenor Jouko Uusipaasto taps into his 30 years of experience as a bus driver, the cobblestones of Tampere’s main thoroughfare, Hämeenkatu, become familiar to everyone. Greetings to all: there will be a moment of silence on behalf of silent knowledge.

by Juhani Artto

Job cuts have a greater impact on the mental health of men than women. This is one of the main conclusions in a recent study made by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, in cooperation with the University of London.

The sample covers over 26,500 public sector employees. More than 4,000 of them lost or left their jobs during the economic recession in the early 1990s. Almost 5,000 remained at work places where large-scale jobs cuts had been carried out. The rest, 17,600 employees, worked at work places where only small or modest job cuts had been made.

The researchers discovered that men who had lost their jobs used (1994 to 2000) about 64 per cent more central nervous system drugs than men at work places where job cuts had been small or moderate.

This came as no surprise to the researchers but they were surprised to find that mental health problems significantly increased also among men who had remained at work places where large or significant job cuts had occurred. In this group usage of central nervous system drugs was almost 50 per cent higher than among men at work places where only small or moderate job cuts had taken place.

Among female employees, at work places where large job cuts had been carried out, usage of central nervous system drugs increased by 12 per cent, compared with women at work places where small or moderate job cuts had resulted.

As indicators of drug usage the researchers availed of the Social Insurance Institute of Finland registry for purchases of depression, anxiety and sleeplessness drugs.

The increased use of psychic drugs associated with large-scale job cuts, reflects the damage to individuals in regard to stressful changes in working life, researcher Jussi Vahtera asserts in his assessment of the results of the study. He warns that the increased usage of psychic drugs may also have a deeper impact on the whole society.

In promotion of mental health it is important to pay attention to working conditions, Vahtera emphasises.

Jouko Huttunen, a paternity expert at the University of Jyväskylä, feels that fathers and mothers in Finland continue to live in the stone age as far as certain attitudes are concerned.

“If there were just a little bit of paternal thinking at workplaces, or if more services were directed toward fathers alongside issues related to mothers, or if the post-natal child clinic system directed more services clearly toward fathers, the attitudes could change”, Huttunen says.

The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health now plans to start encouraging fathers to take parental leave. Stefan Wallin, the Minister responsible for Equality Affairs, is set to launch a project in Helsinki on Friday, aimed at encouraging fathers to take parental leave.

The objective is to promote gender equality at work and in education by increasing the role of fathers in the care of children.

The most frequent users of long parental leaves are mothers who do not have a steady job, or who have little training.

Child care leave is seen as one reason for the weaker position that young women have on the labour market. Employers are afraid to hire women of childbearing age for fear of the absences.

The aim of Wallin’s project is to promote awareness of parental benefits that already exist. This would mean that fathers would also be allowed to use them more.

Mere campaigning and manipulation of attitudes are not enough in the opinion of Jenni Kellokumpu. Legislative changes is also needed, which would eventually filter down to attitudes.

This is suggested by the fact that fathers are using the days off that they are legally entitled to.

“The problem with today’s system is that parents agree between themselves on parental leaves”, Kellokumpu says. “If we could concretely show people we could say ‘Hey Father, these are for you’, men would more consistently avail themselves of the entitlement.”

Education officials are worried that students are spending too long on high school studies. The Ministry of Education is considering new laws to pressure schools to encourage students to graduate earlier.

Under the proposals, municipalities might be penalised and lose out on education funding, if students stay in high school for more than three years.

The Finnish education has always confused me, especially the fact that so many students seem to spend nearly a decade getting a degree and they aren’t even becoming a doctor or teacher.

What makes staying at school so attractive to so many students? Do they get substantial interest free loans or are they sleeping with the lecturers? Perhaps if they remain classified as students it keeps Finland’s unemployment figures down.