The municipality of Lezhe, northwest Albania, is celebrating this Christmas and year-end holidays differently this year, as a bloc of 97 new apartments built in line with the highest contemporary infrastructure standards are ready to welcome quake-affected families that have now recovered stronger than ever in the aftermath of the tragic earthquake on November 26 two years ago.

Thanks to the ongoing reconstruction programme, the earthquake challenge is becoming an opportunity to transform the hardest-hit areas, with Lezhe being one of them.

Prime Minister Edi Rama today was welcomed by local residents in “Beselidhja” neighbourhood, the city of Lezhe, who moved into new homes built back more beautiful, more resilient and with larger living spaces than the one they lost in the earthquake two years ago.

The government head then toured some of the newly-built apartment homes, as well as the community venues, as well as some educational facilities already under construction.

* * *

Good evening everyone! I am very happy to be here together with an apartment building in the back so that no one would be able to call to account against me, claiming that I have failed to deliver on a pledge. Here is what we have delivered.

I am really immensely glad to be here, because not only 97 apartment homes have been built and ready to open doors to their inhabitants, but these are also 97 new stronger and more beautiful homes offering better living spaces, and on my way here I was looking at the apartment building opposite to the new one, and I was imaging how the neighbours will be looking enviously as if they were to be blamed why the earthquake didn’t damage their own apartment building.

This has also been the goal; so that we can recover strongly.

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” – a saying has it, and with the memory of those who tragically lost their lives, whom we stand no chance of bringing them back to life, we are now gradually returning all the affected families to their new homes after a very difficult period, during which we have striven to stay close and not abandon them by providing everyone a rental bonus.  However, no matter how strong the support is and although the number of families and individuals living in tents was pretty limited since the very onset and around 100 families are still living in tents for their own reasons, although they keep receiving the rental bonus, there is no place like home, as the saying has it.

I am very happy to see mothers here who are grandmothers, I see small children, I see grandparents who will extend year-end wishes to each other in a new house and maybe they will think that maybe not all the politicians are all the same.

On the other hand, of course we are not the best possible, but forget it that you would ever find someone better than us. I would like to tell something all of those watching us now and quake-affected residents in Durres and Tirana in particular, still waiting to return home, but they will return to whole residential neighbourhoods already being built and their construction will take time, I want to tell them we have forgotten nothing and we will deliver on everything we have already pledged to do.

Sometimes, one cannot fail to fully deliver on his commitments as much as he or she would have wished to, but never let anyone think that I say the words just for the sake of saying or make promises to gain more votes and then turn your back on people. If something or some things cannot be done in the promised time, this is because of objective reasons.

One should not forget that right after the devastating earthquake, the country was hit by another extraordinary disaster that gripped the whole world, namely the pandemic. Therefore, deadlines were postponed, and the reconstruction took more time.

However, since Lezha residents have close relations with Italy and it is not a coincidence that local cuisine is the best in Albania, because there are many who learn the trade in Italy and return back home to exercise their trade here, you know pretty well that a country, which happens to be the fifth largest economy in the world, has yet to provide housing for many affected families that still live in caravans even 12 years after the earthquakes.

This is not to draw irrelevant comparisons, but I want to simply underline that this is a top priority for us. Trust me; there is not a single day not to think about the families still waiting to move into their new homes.

So, there will be 97 fewer families in my thoughts tomorrow.

You are already moving into the new homes, so there are now 97 fewer families. Around 1000 more families will gradually move into their homes on the New Year’s Eve, as we have already promised, and with God’s help, if we don’t face another challenge, because no one knows now for sure whether another earthquake or a pandemic would hit us again, but I assume we won’t hopefully be hit by everything, we will make sure that all the affected families move into their new homes and the earthquake traces will be totally erased within next year and we will no longer see earthquake ruins, but a whole transformed reality will instead dominate for all of those who lost their homes in a matter of few seconds and have definitely felt totally alone like never before and have certainly thought they will never have their own houses again. Not only will they have their homes as they already have it, but they will have much better homes than they used to have previously, much more beautiful than the ones they used to live in, and much stronger houses than they had prior to the earthquake.

To conclude, on my way here I came across the comments on this social network post about this new residential complex here, generally people congratulated me but I read the comments to find the negative ones. One of them had found out that the new apartment buildings lack a fire escape staircase. For all the families about to move into their new apartments, this building features an elevator, as well as staircases for the residents to use, namely the elevator when no fire breaks, and the staircase, Gog forbid it, in case of a blaze. However I would wish each and every one to go through the fire of love only, the fire of happiness and prosperity in your homes and extend your best New Year wishes to everyone this year. Thank you!