Prime Minister Edi Rama met with best performing high school students and local young people, who wish to join activities and youth organizations, as part of his tour of the northern Albanian region of Tropoja on Friday.
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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Hello everyone and thank you very much for attending! For this conversation to become somehow more interactive, so that not only we but you too express your opinions, moreover the fact that you have definitely happened to have come across these issues and remarks, I suggest that someone or several of you take the floor first to voice concerns, ask questions, level criticism, make suggestions, demands, complains and I will then try to do my part.
– First of all, I would like to thank you also on behalf of all our school students for your contribution to the construction of our school gym. Inclusion of the young people in the decision-making process, their participation in various events is a matter of some concern and we wish to present it as a problem for Tropoja youth. We want to know whether more youth centres will be opened throughout the country and if such a centre would become operational here in Tropoja too?
– My only request is that the pledges you make every day – and this request is actually addressed to Minister Muzhaqi – Tropoja youth aspires for more, but we want concrete objective things, we want deeds and not words.
– I have graduated from nursing school. I ranked in the top list after performing best at the licensure examination. I completed the internship and traineeship degree program at the Durres regional hospital. I used to work for two years as a nurse at the emergency ward of the local hospital in the town of Bajram Curri, but I am jobless now.
-Hello Prime Minister. Unlike others, I would like to suggest something. I’ve completed the bachelor degree program at the Polytechnic University in Tirana and the master degree program in France. I returned back home to Tropoja after 10 years and I currently work for the Albanian Development Fund at the Valbona tourist centre for three years now. I would like to suggest everyone to participate and provide your contribution here in Tropoja too.
PM Edi Rama: First of all, I am very happy to be in this newly-built school gym here, which will definitely serve the new sports programme, apart from the daily work with the physical education, but under the new sports programme now, I am confident that we will gradually succeed in launching a national Olympic movement and allow the schoolboys and girls in the primary education system and in the high education and in the university join sports and play basketball, volleyball and not only, as two sport disciplines that will be included in the school curricula and boys and girls teams are being created in every school all over the country, while teams of other sport disciplines may be launched depending on various realities. Physical education as a school subject was suspended for several years, but we restored it and included it on the curriculum. The school sports clubs programme should have never been suspended. However, the new Sports in Schools Programme is also a result of an inner demand from the schoolchildren and students themselves, a demand we have already come across at all meetings and gatherings we held prior to developing the National Youth Strategy.
As to the other parts of the new programmes, I would like to reiterate and underscore what Bora (Minister for Youth) said regarding the new technology and we aim to provide massive funding for young people, who wish to commit to technology learning, a foreign language of the new century, as facts actually show and as other examples across Albania show, although not many, yet sufficient to clearly demonstrate it. It is a language providing young people with the opportunity to take up jobs all over the world without having to leave their homes.
To help any of you and other young people wishing to embark on this path, we have launched a program and we are already working with several specialised entities that offer international certified training programmes and courses to teach you the essential know-how and skills within six or nine months time for you to use the technology language to programme, code and deliver on certain services at various companies.
Likewise, on the other hand, we want and have already kicked off work on building a new youth centres network, with young people fond of or obsessed with the technology being provided a certain space for them to meet, learn lessons, entertain and even work.
We have already started building some of these centres. The largest one will certainly be the centre due to be housed at the former Pyramid building in Tirana, which is undergoing rehabilitation for this purpose. A similar centre has been built and is already operational in Korça, another one is being developed in Vlora. We will go on with building and opening more youth centres in collaboration with the local government authorities across the country, including Tropoja, but this project will certainly take some time.
On the other hand, I’ve visited Tropoja for years now. I have visited Tropoja regularly and this town and the whole region are a completely different reality now that has nothing to do with what this town used to be when I visited it for the first time, because one can now clearly see there is hope, life and opportunities here.
I would conclude my speech by returning to where I started it from; all these words are not to tell anybody to stay here and not go abroad, because it is better here. Everywhere it could be better, and it could be worse. One can achieve success, but also fail anywhere.
I would also like to answer to the young man, who was a nurse by training, but who is jobless currently. The nurse recruitment is a process conducted via the online-based portal. There is no other way for you to take up a job as a nurse. It is for years now that we don’t take nurses by hand and escort them to the workplace. This was the case previously, when it took joining a political party, it took paying a bribe. But this is no longer the case. The nurse recruitment is conducted via the portal only.
