Even in the city of Vlora property titles were issued for free to people who have built houses without construction permits.
Determined to bring this process forward at a fast pace in order to end a history of delays and corruption that has been going on for years, Prime Minister Edi Rama said that this process will mark a border line between two categories of people: “those who have built without permits but with huge sacrifices by investing all the savings earned with hard work around the world, or the money earned here, in Albania, just enough to sustain themselves, to shelter their families, will have their buildings legalized for free. And those who dare to put a brick without permission will face legal consequences. This unparalleled history of use and abuse has to stop”.
In the district of Vlora about 25 thousand self-declarations have been made in all these years and legalization permits have been issued only for 2700 constructions. In the past 8 years 5-6% of the buildings have been legalized by the previous government in the whole country, while 12% of legalizations have been made just in Vlora. But most of these buildings either did not comply with law or were very problematic.
Director General of ALUIZNI, Mr. Artan Lame, said that these figures do not concern informal areas, but only those legalizations that have been made on the coastline, and most of those should not have been legalized. “This 12 % does not refer to these areas; it does not refer to the “Aviation Field” area either. This 12 % includes buildings in Saranda, constructions made in the National Park of Butrinti, on the coastline and so on. This explains why Vlora has more legalizations”, Lame continued.
Prime Minister Edi Rama noted how this process has been abused in the District of Vlora. “It is a shame how the former ALUIZNI people have abused with legalizations only for profit and corruption. Abusive buildings on the coastline that in no way should have been legalized, have actually been thus hiding from citizens of Vlora its breathtaking views and taking away from Vlora its air and beauty. Additional constructions to excising buildings or brand-new buildings not built to shelter families have been legalized. And those buildings are not made with hard work-earned money, but are made for profit, for sale, for trade. Actually, this is a really shameful side of a power that wherever it could, it destroyed for profit and profited by destroying,” Rama said.
Talking about the free legalization process, Prime Minister explained that in addition to the free process concerning procedures, documentation, etc., the process concerning penalties will be also for free since most of those penalties applied to families have already been removed.
Prime Minister explained also to citizens the benefits they will receive if they pay immediately or within 1 year.
This free legalization process is made also with the intent to raise families’ awareness to pay electricity bills. “Those who pay will have an additional discount of 400 thousand lekë out of 4 millions. Those who pay immediately will have an additional 400 thousand lekë that actually they do not need to pay, but this money will stay with the property registration office as an encumbrance to pay electricity bills. After 2 years, upon showing the paid electricity bills, this encumbrance will be removed. We are doing this because we do not want that families in need or families that have spent all they had to build their houses and that are now facing difficulties, face also justice and end up in jail for stealing power. Because a new measure of the Penal Code is about to enter into force, and this means that very soon those who do not pay electricity bills will not be charged with penalties, but will be sentenced to jail”, Prime Minister noted.
In conclusion of the meeting, Prime Minister said that the legalization process is also very important to economy, both to household economy and to national economy because the money invested to build houses will be transformed into capital for families. Thus families can cooperate with banks to further develop their own economies.
The meeting was attended by the Minister of Urban Development and Tourism, Mrs. Eglantina Gjermeni, by the new Prefect of the District of Vlora, and by PMs who issued legalizations documents to dozens of families in various informal areas of Vlora.
