Prime Minister Edi Rama held an expanded meeting today with the country’s mayors to discuss the government’s priority tasks in every sector and their implementation at the local level.

Prime Minister Rama held an expanded meeting today with the country’s mayors, during which the main directions of the government’s work and the cross-sectoral priorities requiring coordinated implementation at the local level were presented.

 

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Prime Minister Edi Rama:

We have started a process with all the leadership teams of the ministries to see the situation regarding priorities, regarding the problems and to have a complete reading of every sector in the context of this phase of governance and for this reason we thought to also hold this meeting with the Minister of Local Government, who in fact has you and all those who are engaged at the local level as his working team.

I will make a quick pass over the things that have been discussed or have been set in motion or have been defined as priorities, because these are things that concern all of you, all municipalities, and in the context of the work of Albania, they are things that have a direct importance for citizens.

Also, here I have a list, not according to importance, but according to the time at which these things have been placed on the agenda of our joint work. Just as here in this list, there are also some things that are a part of which Ervin touched upon and which have to do with the next steps in our joint work.

We have prepared a very important project to support local government, a project which is led by Minister Demo to make available to municipalities a new fleet of vehicles, which will have to help all the processes that have to do with the cleaning of canals and with the necessary preparatory work for the upcoming seasons, in such a way that both irrigation processes and the consequences that come from floods are eased. It is a project that we will finalise in the coming months, with significant financial support from the government of the United Arab Emirates and on the basis of some simple criteria, the allocation of this fleet in the territory will also be done, naturally transferring these vehicles into the use of municipalities.

Another important point is the work that has started to finalise the addressing system, by requesting from all of you to engage very seriously in that part of the work that belongs to municipalities and at the same time requesting that the cooperation with the Ministry of Interior for this process be led and coordinated by the Minister of Local Government. A significant work has been done in this direction, but it must be finalised and the finalisation requires also the engagement of individuals; you know this very well and for this reason, in the points of the work plan, there will also be a specific point to penalise every individual who does not cooperate with the local government to become part of the addressing system.

Another important component of your work and of our joint work is the increasing protection from fire, and we are very aware of the inherent shortcomings in the logistics related to firefighting. For this reason we have also approved a project presented by the Minister of Local Government, regarding the mobilisation of the necessary financing and, by using the capacities of the company which is a newly created joint public-private company within the system of the Ministry of Defence, we will start to produce and make available to municipalities the firefighting vehicles that are necessary and that will become more and more necessary, taking into account that the phenomenon of fires, especially during the peak heat season, is not decreasing but is aggravating.

Another important point of the project of the Minister of Local Government to further modernise municipalities is also related to the laboratories dedicated to technology in school classes, which today are over 300, while with the government programme they will reach 1000. But they cannot be only laboratories for learning technology for students during class hours, but must also be laboratories for learning technology after class hours and for this there must necessarily be engagement and direct work of municipalities to organise a system where children and young people are given access to these laboratories.

Another element is the lack of a full uniform engagement across the entire territory of municipalities regarding the process of legalisations. Municipalities must engage in this process and, meanwhile, we have assigned a task to the cadastre institution that, in cooperation with each municipality, but here your engagement is required, to build priority plans for legalisation so that we can calendarise the process, make it fairer, more transparent, more predictable for applicants, by establishing a system where it is determined that those who have applied earlier are those who have their turn to receive a response before those who have applied later, for example.

Also, priority zones must be determined, because you know the priority zones, and according to the determination of priority zones, the community should also be informed that it will start, meaning in this phase is this zone, in this phase is that zone, in this phase is that zone; so we must have better joint and coordinated work. And here, municipalities must open an office of legal assistance for the cadastre.

There are many complaints about the cadastre, but from all the analysis carried out, a large part of the complaints about not receiving the service come as a result of not carrying out the application in a correct legal way and to carry out the application in a correct legal way, legal knowledge is needed and this legal knowledge people are then forced to seek from notaries, who charge fees and so on. There is no problem for municipalities to open a legal assistance office specifically for cadastre services and legalisations. It is something that will ease citizens to the maximum in understanding the correct way of making an application for legalisation or for those cadastre services that require slightly more complicated applications than the simplest application and this will be followed by the Minister of Local Government.

Meanwhile, administrative units have generally opened the offices or, more precisely, have opened access to serve citizens for E-Albania, and this is also something positive. But even in this aspect, from the information I have received from the Minister of Local Government, and I do not want here to start giving examples of this one or that one, not everyone does the right thing and not in all municipalities this is well organised for citizens and for this reason citizens are then forced, while they have E-Albania services for free, to go and pay someone to help them access E-Albania.

Another important element of all the work of this period is the mountain package. I am pleased that there has been progress. Some municipalities have not only made progress with procedures, but have already fulfilled that basic objective of 10 projects to be signed and to move into the process of obtaining permits. This is something positive. Only in one of the municipalities, without mentioning names, there are 5 million euros calculated from the first 10 investments in the mountain package from persons who are emigrating and who have received this message, as many others have received it, because I believe you have followed that the interest is high.

The part related to museums: The Ministry of Culture and Tourism has started a very good process to museumise historical buildings. What does this mean? It means that in every municipality, in the vast majority at least, maybe not in cities that are newly created, but even there interesting structures can be found for this, but in every municipality that has at its core an old city or old villages that come from further back, there are houses with important values for cultural heritage, which are uninhabited or are in the process of collapse. And what we are doing with the Ministry of Culture is taking them by the state through a legal expropriation process and museumising them.

In Tirana, we have a number of such cases that have entered this process. We also have some outside Tirana. I have seen the list of the ministry. Engage yourselves. Review them, define them as candidates to enter this process. Share them with the Ministry of Culture and with the Institute of Cultural Monuments to classify their values and plan what they can be museumised for. We have many things that we can exhibit. We are a country that has tourism at the heart of its activity. We are a country that has the fortune that tourism is not concentrated only in one sea or one mountain, but it is spread throughout the territory.

Another element we have here is also raising the level of civil emergencies at the local level. So in this aspect, the Minister of Local Government, together with the Minister of Defence, have been tasked to work and cooperate with you to strengthen local capacities in relation to civil emergencies.

We are also working to review the system of waste collection, which we have made known regarding the aspect of waste processing, but in this case, I am referring to waste, which is generally a problem, especially in the tourist season, in the areas of municipalities that are not urban zones. And for this aspect, it is necessary to establish a task force between the government and local government, for which the Minister of Environment, together with the Minister of Local Government, has been tasked to build a short-term, medium-term and long-term plan, from mass awareness to the steps that must be taken, taking into account also many positive examples that we have.

The Minister spoke about schools and about making available the Planning Agency in terms of supporting municipalities with projects from foreign architects who work in Albania. They are very willing. I am speaking here about projects without payment.

Meanwhile, we are preparing an important legal change regarding planning and territorial development that starts from the Agency. Today, we have three agencies, three structures, we have planning, we have territorial development, and we also have housing separately. They will be merged because we must put a special emphasis on housing, not simply social housing, but also affordable housing. Some people are unable to obtain a house, and for this, we will organise. We are working on some specific programmes as we committed in the election campaign last year, but what is important for this discussion is that we will regionalise the urban planning service for you.

With the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development as well as with the Ministry of Defence we have had a broad and long discussion regarding the creation of a bridge of cooperation for the resilience of critical infrastructure and here, in this concrete case I mean also protective infrastructure in canals, embankments, pumping stations, which are fundamental to protect land, to protect houses from floods and also to ensure continuously the proper functioning of this entire system. And here we need you in an aspect where we need and will need that you to transmit to the Minister of Local Government your analysis of the weak points of the protection system.

Once again, we have the data of the Ministry of Agriculture and we have the data of past crises and previously identified needs. We have all of these, but nevertheless having from you in a very simple format the weak points and with priorities helps us to better plan financing and investments for interventions, which will increase significantly as a result of this format that I mentioned earlier. So by putting also the Ministry of Defence into operation, both in terms of financing and in terms of forces, we have discussed and made a plan to increase internal capacities so that many of these necessary works are carried out directly by the engineering forces of the Republic of Albania.

I want to inform you that we have agreed, no later than today, we have finalised a discussion with the Bank of Albania, with second-level banks to relaunch the sovereign guarantee programme and the credit line of the Bank of Albania, moving to another level in terms of the range of enterprises.

So the first credit line was mainly focused on the countryside, on agriculture, on agritourism, agro-processing, now it will be for all small and medium enterprises that want to grow. So that programme “double your enterprise” will soon enter the field with a package of incentives regarding agro-processing, agribusiness, where people can do a lot, but where they need support both in terms of project drafting, application, but also afterwards partnership with the municipality.

On the other hand, other enterprises, I believe, have more capacity themselves to seek more. I have continuously met small enterprises that are in your cities. I have known some of them also through the podcast, and they really have the potential to develop; they need financing. We will make financing available to them, and whenever and however the municipality can engage, it is good that it engages.

We have also made the decision to make a national programme for the development of parking logistics and the big problem that communities have, especially large cities with residential blocks.

These are mainly the things that I wanted to share with you, adding the necessity to strengthen the structure of vocational education.

I would kindly ask all of you to be active in this aspect, and regarding dormitories for vocational education, we have made a special programme, and we have started some interventions. If we build, as we have started, quality dormitories, then you must identify the needs for other vocational schools and on the other hand, also the needs for dormitories of vocational schools. Let us do these tasks and the other tasks, let us do them all and let us do them as well as possible.

Ok, thank you very much!