Prime Minister Edi Rama’s remarks at a cabinet meeting with central and local government officials on employment, the service delivery reform and the land reform:

 

Good morning to everyone!

Today’s meeting is a kind of gathering with the regional agencies of central government and local government authorities the cabinet holds regularly during events outside Tirana in order to take stock of achievements, discuss pressing issues and highlight our objectives.

I would like to begin by highlighting the government’s objective to take the public service delivery to a completely different level and put emphasis on a series of difficulties we encounter in this aspect, since a number of parasitic and incompetent public servants – who are already used to abuse office and power to benefit at the expense of the citizens and their rights – are still working in the administrative service offices across the country.

One of the issues of strategic importance is to continuously encourage people to cooperate with the government via the online platform for co-governance with citizens entitled “Albania We Want” www.shqipiëriaqëduam.al.

The platform’s history to date  clearly indicates that in most of the cases “the No” and “we will see” answers, which are used a key to communication with the citizens on their rights, are completely abusive.

Few days ago, the Minister of Justice informed the public on the progress of the co-governance with citizens platform, mainly focusing on the provision of the public services by the Immovable Property Registration Office, the Agency of Legalisation, Urbanisation, and Integration of Informal Zones (ALUIZNI), as two main reference points for the citizens at this stage of our history, with the demand for the property titles and legalization certificates being still very high.

Unfortunately, the platform and the interaction with the citizens have revealed how much the citizens are being unjustly inflicted in terms of, first and foremost, their applications to receive the property title deeds from the Property Registration Office. On the other hand, we have expressed our commitment to this process to ensure that any citizens – who rightly ask for the due document they have indeed failed to receive for years but now they will be provided in ten days time – but they have been unjustly balked from receiving such documents we don’t stop there but we identify those responsible for the repercussions on the citizens by firing them from their job and sending their case to justice institutions.

More than 80 property registration office employees have been fired from their job exactly for that reason and precisely thanks to the direct interaction with citizens. A considerable number of property registration specialists have been also warned.

I’m saying this in order to underline two things:

The heads of the Property Registration Offices should be clearly aware of the fact that the job they have taken over is of tremendous importance to the citizens’ lives. Any delay, procrastination and failure to ensure timely service delivery is primarily their responsibility and they won’t be able hide behind any employee who is who is directly responsible for violating the right to public service.

All citizens should be clearly sent the message that they no longer need to waste time in thinking and seeking to find other ways to solve their problem, but simply address to the co-governance with the citizens platform, spend a maximum of three minutes to bring their problem up and they will receive a response within ten days, thus achieving their goal to obtain what they are entitled to and at the same time helping to identify those responsible for the delay in providing the service.

We have ushered in a new service delivery phase. A number of significant public services, around 400, are directly delivered via the online e-Albania platform. However, it is crucially important that all state institutions, the local and central government officials and employees across the country provide their contribution to ensure that more and more people become aware of the existence of such services and more and more people use these services, which are quick, efficient and away from allowing room for any kind of abuse or corruption practices.

Being here in the region of Fier, I would like to specifically address a long-standing and still unsolved problem regarding the farmland ownership issue. We are closely cooperating with the local government authorities and the Municipality of Fier specifically. We are looking to seeing that the Municipality has adopted an efficient way to address this pressing and extremely complicated issue due to long-standing problems over the years, which will then clear the way to extend this methodology, which has been employed in the village you mentioned earlier, not only to the villages in this region, but also to all rural areas and villages beyond the Municipality of Fier. Ultimately resolving the farmland ownership and property title deed issues is the government’s top priority.

The local water supply and sewerage company in Fier has made significant progress in the water reform which has already produced significant results that speak for themselves, although a lot remains to be done.

The water reform is a priority. Improving access to water supply service and collecting the water bill according to the consume are two objectives that go hand in hand in this extremely important  and transformation process for both local and national mainstream economy.

It is also necessary to take the quality of relation between the tax inspectors and the local business entities to a new level. It is also imperative for all to be aware and act on the principle of cooperation with business rather than on the principle of punishing the business.

An extraordinary work has been done to inform small business on the latest changes. Actually, out of over 9 000 businesses affected by this change, tax inspectors have met and directly communicated with over 6 000 of small businesses across the country until last week. Our goal is to meet all and every small business owner to explain what is all about, but beyond this fragile moment it is important to ensure that the relation between the tax administration and the business is a relation based on the principle of cooperation and not on the principle of punishment. We have a lot to do in this respect, train and educate all members of the tax inspectors’ body and the institutions engaged in direct contact with the citizens.

We will soon launch a nation-wide public accountability campaign which will include the entire government cabinet, according to the ministries and all agencies and central offices operating across the country to ensure transparency and highlight current weaknesses and taking responsibilities from anyone who is responsible for not moving ahead of the modernization, transparency and service delivery efficiency project.