Manpower shortage hurts Poland, officials say

A manpower shortage is preventing recovery of major sectors of Polish industry, Polish officials said. The official news agency said state enterprises registered a 12 percent increase in vacancies in January over December. The problem was described as increasingly acute, with January's vacancy figure 2.5 times that of the previous year. The imbalance was blamed on, among other things, a flawed early retirement plan and policies during the '70s that raised young people's expectations and made them unwilling to take up so-called ''dirty jobs.''