Talented young boys and girls, technology, arts and sports enthusiasts and admirers in the south-eastern city of Korca joined the visiting Prime Minister Edi Rama at a discussion focusing on education, technology knowhow and the fresh employment opportunities for young people through technology, creation of modern spaces and involvement in the afterschool training courses.
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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Thank you very much for this amazing view and it is really a special pleasure to visit Korça, since it is home to a series of sites that we have already built and which offer spaces of positive energy that we need to make a reality in other cities and other parts across the country. I don’t want to simply deliver a speech and end this event. Instead, I would like each and every one of you here to engage in a conversation and since I have mentioned Korça so often for the local boys and girls who have taken up international jobs from their own homes and since I have tried to convey and promote their example to encourage their peers across the country to do the same thing and realize this is something for real and not a stuff of fantasy. But I have failed to do so, because probably they fear of being caught by the local tax administration red-handed and this is actually part of the truth, isn’t it?
-My name is Vjola. I am very pleased to be provided this opportunity to share my work experience in the online marketing area. I was contacted by the Municipality of Korça that had launched a very positive initiative to offer various information technology courses and I didn’t hesitate at all. It was there that I realized the endless online employment opportunities. I have now founded my team and I am working on building my own brand. What are the government and the municipal plans for the start-ups?
PM Edi Rama: First of all, you have surpassed our plans, because what we wish is to create as many opportunities as possible for the young people to embark on high paying careers. This sector actually has the highest paying jobs on offer and it depends on the level of your capacities, and one working in this sector earns much higher wages than ours and you could be a high school or a university student and still take up such a high paying job position. Therefore, the government’s only responsibility in this aspect is to spread your example as much as possible and encourage others to do so. Not only that, but you can move to a whole new level to employ other people thanks to your capacities and skills to the international labour market without having to leave your own home in Korça. You found a company of your own, eying a unique product – and this is what the start-up stands for – we then have the start-ups programme that are becoming annual ones. We will continue supporting you so that you can become competitive, to promote your product and gain support in a sector where competition is fierce.
– My name is Andrea. I am the one you described a bit earlier, but the difference is that I am not your friend, but just an artist. The best example can be set through hard work, by demonstrating what technology has offered me to date. This is the cover of a book published by a French publishing house and we all know art is a very difficult and demanding profession to earn a living in the traditional way, the old fashioned way. The technology, on the other hand, offers unimaginably endless opportunities or this has been at least the case with me. You can gain customers from all over the world, while the income is incomparable. Promotion is much easier and what one doesn’t notice instantly is the increased capacities it offers just for the fact that you are provided the opportunity to compare yourself with other individuals globally and what you can accomplish and deliver on through hard work. I would just like to say that art too, a profession not widely practiced in Albania, can create and provide you ample employment opportunities, let alone coding and programming that is much more preferred and more widely popular. This is why I would like to inspire and urge everyone with a strong will to work hard and ready to best harvest and take advantage of the technology.
PM Edi Rama: I would like to sincerely thank you all. I didn’t know you are the mastermind of what I actually saw firsthand a day ago, which was something definitely beautiful. I have always been concerned when we embarked on that project and together with Niko Peleshi (Socialist MP) and Mayor we used to discuss management issues of such an ambitious and large project and that space. I am very happy to see today that amazing space today. It was absolutely one of the top best spaces one would find in any European city and therefore I would like to express gratitude for your work and everyone else involved in this project.
However, what I would like to note is that in addition to the technology program, we need to press ahead with the sports program, which is now already a reality in the regions of Fier, Elbasan, Dibër and Korça that I have been visiting recently as part of this tour.
We have also planed the arts and crafts program that we will definitely launch as of as early next year by making use of a number of school buildings in the after school hours across Albania and the main aspect we have been repeatedly discussing, and I am not sure whether we have already tackled it, is the aspect of coordination of the schoolchildren and their involvement in such programs.
– I currently see many young people who intend to leave the country. I also know many of my friends who graduated high school and have actually succeeded abroad. Everyone we ask says they won’t return to Albania, “Albania has no future, considering this whole situation.” What are you in the government doing to stop this mass exodus, because Albania’s population is gradually aging as all the young people are leaving? What measures are being taken? How and what can convince a young man to stay in his country today?
PM Edi Rama: Thank you for the question. First of all, despite my role and my capacity as the prime minister, I stick to some of my convictions, despite my official position. I think that every young man and girl has the right to have the ambition to even go to the Moon and nobody can tell a young man or girl not to leave the country and instead stay here for whatever reason. Fortunately we now live in a country that is no longer isolated and where people were not legally allowed to travel and leave the country. People now enjoy the right to travel and take advantage of this opportunity, because the world is getting smaller and smaller in terms of the movement of people, also because of the technology and telling young people to stay here would be nonsense. Second, Albania is not part of the Europe’s richest and most developed club of countries, but it is a country that embarked on the path of development too late as compared to other nations and therefore an objective and insurmountable distance has been created, one that we can’t outrun, but we can still narrow through hard work and efforts.
Those who think that it is really easy to work and live abroad, let him try and see for himself, especially now amid this tough situation and the ever rising costs. Some tend to draw comparisons among the wage levels abroad. It is true that workers receive higher monthly wages abroad, but one should also consider the living costs and expenses.
The conversation with you was really an interesting one, yet they are signalling me that we have to leave. We will attend another meeting to present municipal projects, accomplishments and performance. If you have nothing else to do, I would invite you all to attend and go on with conversation, so that I can also provide a complete answer to the question whether there is really a future here. But the future needs to be built gradually and jointly.
Thank you!
