A new career and employment centre, combining the resources of the provincial and federal governments, opened in Weyburn on Wednesday, providing a place for both workers and employers to find what they need.

The Canada-Saskatchewan Career and Employment Services office was opened by Post-Secondary Education and Skills Training Minister Glenn Hagel, and included a projection to allow those on hand to see the new website established to provide career, employment and labour market information. This site can be found at www.sasknetwork.gov.sk.ca

"The purpose is straightforward, to provide for the people of the district and city of Weyburn access to programs and services that will do a better job of matching employee and employer needs," said Hagel in his opening remarks.

The Weyburn office offers a variety of resources, with information on resume writing, labour market information and job trends, counsellor-assisted career planning and computerized services with CD-ROM software and videos. There are four public-access computer terminals for use of this material along with an Internet hookup to go on-line to SaskNetWork.

In some ways, this new provincial-federal centre will take on some of the resources formerly available at the federal Weyburn Human Resources Centre of Canada, located on the main floor of the Pepper building. Any need to do a job search can now be done at the new centre, plus employers can also bring their needs for workers to the centre as well.

The centre also provides information on apprenticeship programs, skills training and employment programs, education, literacy and income support programs for students.

Asked if this centre might be duplicating some of what the Human Resources centre is doing, Hagel replied, "This is an effective combination of federal-provincial resources where the real winners are the employees and employers in the city and district. If you are looking for work and you don't know what to do, come here. If you're an employer needing workers, come here. You can look at labour trends, what education is needed. It's a one-stop centre."

Mayor Don Schlosser was on hand for the opening as well, and commented on the governmental cooperation to make the centre possible.

"It's nice to see the provincial and federal government pooling their resources together. I think it's the way to go, and should help people looking for jobs and get them on the right track. It's certainly easier than going from one office to another," said the mayor.

"It's two levels of government working together; we should have more of that," he added.

The Weyburn centre is one of 20 such centres being established around the province under a federal-provincial agreement signed about two years ago. For their part, the province agreed to take responsibility to provide career and employment programs to EI clients, with funding from the federal government through the EI Account.