Construction of hundreds of schools, kindergartens and nursery schools in the quake-affected areas across the country, as part of the ongoing post-earthquake reconstruction programme in the country, is particularly welcome by teachers, who will be offered contemporary standards and optimal teaching conditions as the newly-rebuilt educational facilities will deliver the same education standards observed in the European Union member states.

At a meeting with local residents in Korça, including teachers and local education officials, Prime Minister Edi Rama underlined that the post-earthquake crisis was turned into a window of unique opportunity to build back better, safer and more resilient for the affected people and provide them the opportunity to return back to new homes and schools designed to meet much better living and education standards than the houses or school buildings they lost in the devastating earthquake on November 26, 2019. “The earthquake was a disaster of incredible magnitude. Unfortunately, some of those affected didn’t succeed and they couldn’t survive the tremor and their families lost their loved ones, whereas thousands of others were made homeless after few seconds. In the meantime, thousand of teachers, pupils, students and kids found themselves without schools, without kindergartens, and nursery schools, without their daily destination and it was clear to us that this was a huge crisis that should be turned into an incredible opportunity to build back better for the affected folks  and provide them the opportunity to move into new houses that deliver much better living conditions, and students and teachers to return to school buildings that deliver contemporary habitability and educational standards.

The Premier noted that with the post-earthquake government support, a series of ambitious and high quality projects were designed and are currently being implemented to reconstruct educational facilities in the quake-hit areas.  “What was most important – and I have the impression that many do not want to see or understand it – is that with that financial support we provided the opportunity ourselves to be completely free to spend. By having this opportunity in place, we have done and we are doing a very good job in the reconstruction projects implementation, by hiring leading construction companies with the sufficient capacities and human resources to involve in such projects. The Reconstruction Programme has created more than 27.000 new jobs.”

In the meantime, work is also underway to repair the existing schools and build new educational facilities, which are not part of the Reconstruction Programme. “As for the construction of other new school buildings, we have definitely tried to increase standards. The standards have improve, yet not in a uniformed way. This is also true. Funding and implementation of projects on construction of new school buildings is a process that is coordinated with the local government authorities, but not all municipalities have the right capacities to design projects like the ones you have seen as part of the Reconstruction Programme. Likewise, companies and supervisors do not always do the job, as is being done under the terms of the Reconstruction Programme. So, in addition to the Reconstruction Programme, we have invested significantly in mainly the reconstruction of existing schools and their number is significantly high. With the Reconstruction Programme underway, the number of new schools rebuilt over the past seven years is higher than the entire number of reconstructed school buildings during all previous years combined. But this is also a lesson learned, a new experience that would definitely help us to improve standards and implement high quality investments at reasonable cost,” the government head said in his remarks.