The town of Kavaje is recovering and fully leaving earthquake devastation behind on the eve of the New Year 2022. A total of 153 families today are moving into new government-financed apartments recently built under the reconstruction programme, which is restoring hope to the affected residents in every area hardest hit by the devastating earthquake two years ago.

Prime Minister Edi Rama visited the new residential complex in Kavaje, where the traces of ruins have disappeared making way to a modern residential complex built in line with optimum standards and featuring spaces dedicated to children and old people, which in November two years ago simply seemed to be a mission Impossible.

“Our goal is to make sure that all the earthquake effects and traces totally disappear within 2022,” PM Rama said in his remarks. He also said that the post-earthquake reconstruction program is designed to make sure that new houses are built in every area hit by the earthquake so that “a new house is built in every area where the earthquake inflicted deep wounds, so that families become happy, and children, grandmothers and grandfathers remember the earthquake as a moment when adversity, misfortune, and heartache were transformed into great opportunity.”

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I am very happy to be given the opportunity today to visit you at your own homes after a considerable time span.

Being homeless for two years is a lot in the life of a family, but building new dwellings for thousand upon thousand families in two years is quite an accomplishment and really a very fast one, if we are to consider the fact that just across Adriatic, where the world’s the fifth-largest economy, which has been hit by a series of earthquakes, has yet to provide housing to many families still waiting in cabins and caravans to return back home after their dwellings were destroyed by earthquakes 10, 12 or 15 years ago.

But, by drawing such a comparison and by adding that we could have progressed a lot faster if the pandemic was not to happen and block our post-earthquake reconstruction plans temporarily. However, seeing a considerable number of families returning home to celebrate the New Year’s Eve together with their children under a newly-built roof is a source of energy, optimism, courage and pride, frankly speaking.

It is one of the reasons that politics motivates you to keep dealing with it while seeing all these children and old people moving into new houses, built back more beautiful, more resilient and safer. It is one of the reasons that politics motivates you to keep dealing with it and not become as much as fed up and turn your back on it and therefore leave people alone just because of those who are commonly found in every community and who don’t refrain from levelling accusations and abusive remarks.

It is one of the moments when everyone should realize how important it is for politics to fall into the hands of those who do the right things. I am also very happy today to see all these children and elderly, who happily move into their new homes after having been through a very tough period and a severe psychological shock of losing their homes. And they are returning to homes which are definitely safer, cozier and more beautiful and, above all, they are here as part of a community and residential complex built according to optimum standards like the residential blocs available to those who can actually afford purchasing new houses in Tirana, a residential bloc that features playgrounds for children and recreational spaces for the elderly, as well as underground parking lots. This is a residential block that offers everyone the opportunity to feel part of a community, as well as legitimate owners of a property they can pass down from one generation to the next, all provided for free to them. These families are the legitimate owners of these new houses and they have been granted the property ownership title for free.

The ongoing reconstruction program, unlike similar post-earthquake reconstruction plans in other countries, is the first of its kind delivering new houses to the quake-affected families totally for free.

It is of course a state budget contribution, a significant solidarity contribution from our partners, who stood by us on that very difficult day, and a contribution of the countries that participated in the international donors’ conference. So, each and every one of you are now the legitimate owners of these homes as soon as you move into them.

At the end of the day, this is a solidarity contribution of no financial burden whatsoever on those who were directly affected by the earthquake and no burden at the expense of their families and children to repay any loan, however soft.

As soon as you move into these houses, you are the owners of them and given that we are here in a Democratic Party  stronghold, in political terms, what you can go through at most in the future is that you might see your door locks changed, as they can’t take your door keys away.

Nobody would be able to tell you that these houses are government-funded properties and therefore you should pay for them. This is something they can’t do.

These are your houses and no one can show up and claim anything.

They are yours for you to inherit, they are yours to rent, they are yours to sell, if you wish to do so one day, like all the legitimate property owners in the Republic of Albania.

This is certainly another reason for us to feel proud of.

I would also like to point out something that is constantly repeated by those who have actually nothing to say as they have said it all.

At the very beginning, they claimed that the affected families would remain homeless.

Indeed, the post-earthquake recovery and reconstruction is not simply a reconstruction programme focusing on rebuilding only, but from day one it has actually been s genuine national reconstruction programme, as we embarked on identifying the possible sites where we could built the new residential complexes, tackle the property issues, address the funding issues and the projects, making sure in the meantime that just 24 hours after the tremor everyone was provided warm shelter and food without building camps, caravans and tent camps for the affected families.

Tents were erected for the quake-affected families in rural areas only and in the areas where the houses were located far from the residential urban centres, in a bid to provide direct assistance to the families that wished to stay there so that they could keep looking after their farm animals and agricultural land.

All the families, several thousands of them, were immediately provided a government-funded rental bonus and everyone, including you already moving into your new homes and waiting to do so in the near future, are still living in rented houses so that everyone can go on with their normal lives. Around 100 families still live in tents and they are doing so as they wish to stay close to their farm land and domestic animals. However they are all entitled to receiving the government-funded rental bonus every month.

It is worth stating that this is not money provided by the international donors, as some repeatedly claim. This is not the case.

The government of Albania is the one providing the largest contribution to the post-earthquake reconstruction programme. We are immensely proud of this; we are proud for succeeding in pressing ahead with the government-funded reconstruction projects, despite the difficult situation in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic that ensued.

Our international partners have provided significant contribution and are currently contributing to construction of a number of schools, namely under the EU-funded programme, construction of the new residential complex in the town of Lac by the government of the Republic of Turkey, and construction of the new residential bloc in Spitalle by the Crown Prince of the United Arab Emirates. Every other reconstruction project is being materialized through the Albanian taxpayers’ money and I am highlighting this fact for everyone to be clear, since some claim that Albania would have been rebuilt twice through the international donors’ pledges.  We have been provided significant financial assistance by our international partners, but they do not allocate or transfer funds to the Albanian government. Instead, the international partners prepare the projects themselves, pick the builders, pay them and oversee construction themselves. What the government does in these processes is just monitoring the process and making decisions about projects, standards, and about everything. Everything else is done by the partners themselves. All the EU-funded educational facilities are built by the European Union itself. So it is the EU that designs the projects, selects the winning construction companies, supervises the whole construction process and pays every construction cost itself. It is not about bags or suitcases filled full of money either in Brussels or in Istanbul or in Abu Dhabi and being sent here. They contribute according to that part of the reconstruction program we have asked them to contribute.

I would also like to highlight another important fact as many claim the public debt is increasing uncontrollably.

This is not true at all.

This is a state budget contribution provided to those most in need. This is our governing philosophy.

We are here primarily for the people most in need.

We are here to primarily provide relief to the most vulnerable social categories and every government certainly does so through the tax collections. This is what the governments have always done throughout the history of mankind. This is what the governments are tasked with, namely managing the taxpayers’ money and the difference among the governments is not made by the fact which administration does the work better in managing the citizens’ contributions. And I believe that despite all the difficulties, deficiencies and shortcomings, we know how to do our job better than anyone else in this country.

The last comment will be addressed to all of those who are now watching these families moving into their new homes and still wait to do so themselves.

This is really a large residential complex, because it is extended to the other side of this site, where work is in full swing and it is set to complete within January, when the rest of quake-affected families will move into their new homes.

So, these 153 families that are about to move into the new homes and the families about to enter their homes in the other side next month will form a large community and will inherit a residential complex that meets the standards of any similar complex built for citizens who can afford purchasing a house right at the heart of Tirana.

In the meantime, two much larger residential complexes are still in the process as it takes more preparatory work and longer time to complete, namely the residential complexes in the May 5 and Kombinat neighbourhoods in Tirana, and the new neighbourhood in Spitalle, Durres.

Work is underway on these projects too and our goal is to erase any trace of the earthquake within 2022 and a new house is built in every area where the earthquake inflicted deep wounds, so that families become happy, and children, grandmothers and grandfathers remember the earthquake as a moment when adversity, misfortune, and heartache were transformed into great opportunity, because 99% of people who lost their homes in the earthquake, thanks to the joint work together will now enjoy better, safer, more resilient and more beautiful homes with larger living spaces than the houses they used to live in before the earthquake was to hit the country. A good part of these families would have never been able to purchase a house like these in ten or 15 years.

Therefore, I am glad to wish you all to enjoy your new houses! It is truly extraordinary to travel to attend end-of-year meetings, because it is like going somewhere and being supplied with positive energy, which is the energy of your hearts and of all those people who all of a sudden found themselves under the open sky and then thanks to this solidarity they are gradually beginning to believe and now they are touching the reality of a great, solemn, kept commitment, that we will not leave anyone alone because shortly after the earthquake hit the country, both you and I and we all thought that this was a blow from which we could not recover, that we are not a rich country nor a super powerful state. But here we are. We can succeed and I can state that just like we have succeeded in coping with these natural disasters, namely the earthquake and the pandemic, nothing can stop us from succeeding in dealing with any other difficulty.

The state-reconstruction process is just like this whole reconstruction process. It poses its difficulties and hurdles, but we will keep moving forward. Enjoy your new homes!