Allaraj family in the village of Farke, Tirana Municipality, is celebrating two events as their newly built home opened its doors on birthday of their daughter Merisilda, who turned 13 today. The best equipped new home to meet all family needs was built from scratch on the land plot now owned by Allaraj family, where ruins of the old house are still there, including wooden beams, tins and stones, after being reduced to rubble due to the devastating earthquake that hit the country last November.

Prime Minister Edi Rama was Allaraj family guest today. “Thank you very much. The new house was built very quickly,” the family head said, adding that he has been also provided with all regular property ownership documents.

“It was thanks to this that the family was also provided the property documents too. So, the family now owns a property that can be used in the market. They didn’t posses any document on the land plot and their house previously,” Tirana Mayor Erion Veliaj said.

Mayor Veliaj underlined that work is also underway according to contracts to rebuild homes for the quake-affected families in other rural areas of Tirana Municipality. “Contract implementation is also underway in the village of Baldushk. This weekend I visited Zallherr. There, too, work to construct individual homes has kicked off with new structures being built on the site of old houses. Meanwhile, we are about to launch work to construct the residential neighbourhoods in Vaqarr, Zallherr, Ndroq and Peza,” Veliaj said.

Head of the Farke administrative unit said that construction of 20 more new houses is set to complete within a month, adding that a total of 65 houses will be rebuilt in Farke.

Mayor Veliaj highlighted that in addition to the construction schedule, great attention is being placed on provision of the property ownership documents in order to prevent abuse and irregularities.

“A total of 875 new homes will be built all over the territory of Tirana Municipality and contracts have been already awarded for construction of 400 of them and work is already underway. The rest will be built as part of the residential neighbourhoods. We have made preparations to make sure that property documents are also issued to residents who will move into their new homes,” Veliaj said, highlighting a concrete example in Zallherr. “These colleagues in the Democratic Party showed today someone whose house has yet to be built. Indeed, we found out that he was really homeless, but he was not made homeless due to the earthquake. So, the principle is that families with social needs will be granted rent bonus under our social projects. However, the quake-affected families will be treated as such according to the respective file. It might have taken some time to prepare everything, but this has happened for a good reason. And one of the reasons why all these people were out to welcome us is because there is a reason for celebration, as a family in need was assisted. For this reason, I believe that work to construct individual private homes will complete by November,” Mayor Veliaj said. In the meantime, Tirana Mayor also informed that tender has been launched and groundbreaking work to construct the initial bunch of apartment buildings in “5 maji” and Kombinat neighbourhoods will begin within next six weeks. He also said that “clear answers will be provided next week” about construction of schools. We will go over the complaint procedures and work to construct 11 new schools will begin shortly after, in an unimaginable construction site for school buildings.”