Prime Minister Edi Rama at meeting with students to unveil the career and employment portal for excellent students and graduates, www.punetembare.al:
Albana Kociu, Director of the Public Administration Department:
Greetings everyone!
Welcome to this important meeting at the Public Administration Department. Today it is a very important day as, thanks to the most recent Albanian government decisions, the public administration has thoroughly changed the quality of its employees, by including excellent students in the administration.
Today we are presenting the platform www.punetembare.al, a new mechanism, providing the excellent students and graduates with direct employment and career opportunities in the public administration. It is a new platform available to all best performing students, who can access the vacancies announced on this online platform and pick the job position they wish via a simple application and registration process.
For us as a public administration employee, this initiative certainly will be of great benefit, but I am sure it is a two-way and mutual benefit. On the part of public administration, the energy and knowledge of newly graduates and youth will be an energy to change the way we work in our daily life, the way the administration performs, a new approach to improve the quality service delivery to citizens.
For the newly graduates, the initiative will also provide an extraordinary opportunity to gain initial experience so that they develop awareness and future career ambitions and make them decide whether the public administration is the job they want, or whether there are other career prospects.
The platform www.punetembare.al being unveiled today has currently 804 vacancies on offer, with the majority of the available job positions in the civil service institutions and other positions in institutions outside the civil service. The civil service job positions are available in important institutions, ministries and government agencies, as well as other institutions operating under conditions as prescribed by labour code are important in terms of how they work and what each of you and every student can benefit thanks to deep expertise opportunities in certain job positions.
The platform has over 800 job positions on offer, which every student can take up without having to take an exam prior to applying for a position, but just by completing an online registration process in the www.punetembare.al platform, by filling a set of basic documents, including the CV, diploma, the final list of grades and the judicial clearance certificate, together with an ID copy. The vacancies will then automatically appear, depending on the diploma type and its degree and it interested you should just click on the “Apply” button. So it is very simple and not a complex procedure.
The online platform features two special sections. If you are interested in taking up a job within the civil service, you can click on that section, on which a total of 602 vacancies are currently on offer. Meanwhile, the other section offers the job positions in the state institutions under the labour code and you can easily apply for every vacant position. The platform is a great opportunity and every student and graduate with a grade point average 9 to 10 is invited to apply.
If you have any question regarding the application procedure, please feel free to ask. We are available to any question and will continue to be available in every university and faculty across the country. We will also be available via the social network pages to provide any explanation over the platform.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Before going over details, because the reason we are holding this meeting is to introduce the student career and employment portal, a new platform based on the very same selection process similarly applied with the previous successful platforms on teachers and nurses employment, or the university admission platform, which, I believe you haven’t gone through as it is a new platform, and it is consolidated as it guarantees university enrolment for each student solely on merit through a digital system.
This platform is the meaningful expression of what I have clearly stated since the very first day. The student protest holds a great potential to bring about a radical transformation together and take the Higher Education Reform to a second stage. The eight famous demands are a starting point but they fail address the whole spectrum of university problems and needs, yet it has provided us a fresh impetus to expand this spectrum by creating this program.
Why such a program couldn’t be made without you and without the student protest?
Because of a simple reason. Because the Law on Civil Service and recruitment of the civil servants pursuant to this law are an expression of a long-time work with the European Commission and monitored by the European Commission.
The protest and this exemplary display of some deep concerns and of the great need to open the public administration doors by overcoming some of the objective barriers set by this law, gave us the opportunity to sit down with the European partners too and explain them we need to shun the law at this particular moment and pave the way for all best performing students to contribute to our state administration under a special government decision.
You know very well that you may have graduated with highest grade point average 10, but when you apply for a job at the Public Administration Department, the reply you receive is that you have no work experience. And the question you make is: “Ok, I have no work experience, but how am I supposed to gain such experience”?
We had already taken an initial step by introducing a series of internship programmes, but, however, it creates a kind of gap, with everyone rightfully being discouraged and wondering whether there will ever be a future for them and therefore deciding to leave the country, or even worse, others who might not be really fit for the job, but just because they have this work experience, it is them who take the job position that you rightfully wished to take.
By introducing this employment program, we actually avoid the law and not only that, but, what’s more important, thanks to the student protest we will also overcome the inertia and the famous tradition with everyone “having the fair slice of the cake.” This means that priority will be given to the best performing students and employees.
This priority will be guaranteed in a transparent manner and wholly mechanical one. The performance results and the grade point average will be the main indicator for each applicant. That is, if five vacancies at the Ministry of Finance are available to graduates who fit to the job profile, while 15 students apply for the position, who of them is then going to be hired? The applicant with the highest grade point average will be entitled to choose first. Should this applicant declines the job position opting for the private sector instead, then it is the turn of another applicant with somehow a lower grade point average to choose. Once he decides to take the job, then four remaining vacancies are available.
This mechanism guarantees a fair and correct competition and full transparency, similarly to the mechanism applied for the university admissions.
The higher education system still faces a lot of problems, just like Albania itself certainly does. But, can be drawn a comparison with the previous five years? Certainly not. Ah – you might say – we don’t care what has been happening five years ago, but where we will be after five years? We have a lot to do in this regard. Why I am saying this?
Have you ever imagined that you are the ones to have been admitted to the university according to a merit-based system? Had you ever imagined that there would come a day in Albania when the son of a shepherd in the highlands of Tepelena will be admitted to a university and my son wasn’t should the first scores better? I am citing this an example, since my son failed to enter university first time and was forced to work for a year. If you fail, then find a job, because I am not going to intervene in order for you to enter the university. This is the truth.
Having said this, we need to clarify on certain things.
It is said that should you fail to gain a master degree, then no one would hire you. This is not true. The platform offers job positions for the best master degree graduates and best bachelor degree graduates alike. But, of course, a master degree holder has better career prospects and can take executive positions. I am citing an extreme example, yet it is untrue that you should be a master degree holder in order to take up a government job.
The protest has also served many other very important aspects. Many ask: “Why a protest should take place? Didn’t you know all these?” I am sorry, but I want to ask you: “Why protests take place in more developed countries? Don’t they know problems?” It is the system. Protests are the best and more meaningful part of the system we have chosen, with those who elect us having the right to complain and call on us to focus on ways to address the citizens’ problems. You might well know the problem concerning me, but you may be not sufficiently focusing on ways to tackle it. It may happen that you know my problem, but you may rightfully or wrongfully think that the problem concerning another group is far more important than mine and I ask for your understanding why my problem is more important than the problem concerning the other group.
Another element has to do with many university elements. Today, all cabinet members are working about the universities according to the field of expertise. That is, the new finance minister will work with the faculty of economics to forge partnership; the minister of infrastructure and energy is working with all faculties involved in this field of study to establish partnership. That is, a partnership aimed at improving conditions, the didactic means, the laboratories and scientific research in order to use the university expertise to generate revenue through particular research programmes. We are talking about tariffs and the state budget, but universities themselves are a significant source of revenue they can generate by providing and selling know-how and knowledge.
Which of the Albanian universities are selling knowledge? None of them.
Which university develops programmes and projects for third parties? None of them.
Why they don’t do that?
Because we live in a country where the government is not credited with doing something good. Whatever good thing is done by the government is less than what is should had to do. I agree. But on the other hand the government and the government only is to blame for every problem! But the universities are autonomous institutions and you know that all your demands should have been addressed to the universities themselves, to the rector, deans and the senate. Students demand a more saying with their vote? Why? Every decision is passed by the senate and the students are represented in the senate. But none of this has functioned and you now blame the government.
When I say I am part of this protest, I am not doing so for propaganda reasons, and not to use it as a slogan and to please you. Not at all! This is not the case! I say it, because I believe that we together should work to make the university work. It is not a matter of addressing to the government anytime we face a problem. Moreover, at a time we are in some rather surreal conditions. I don’t know how to explain it to certain individuals that a lot of time needs to pass before happening or getting finished.
Fulfilment of all demands is already underway. No one had demanded this student employment platform. We added it. There are many other things we have added and we will publish on the Pact for the University, a document that needs to be discussed, but all student demands are being met.
There are students who send messages, saying they asked about the tuition fees at bank or at the university’s secretary. You need to go nowhere. We have assumed to pay 50 percent of the tuition fee for all students with grade point average ranging from 4 to 8, and 100 percent of the tuition fee for best performing students with grade average point 9 to 10, as well as for the students coming from poor families being treated under social welfare program and students with disabilities. The government will pay the tuition fee. We will also find a solution for the students who have already paid the whole tuition fee. It won’t be easy at all in technical terms, yet we will find a solution, by either returning the payment, or by covering the whole tuition fee in the coming years.
But why and how is it possible that a small group of people no longer gather in front of the Prime Minister’s office, but instead choose to prevent others from entering the classrooms?
Not the majority, but even a single person – since this is the democracy and we are talking about democracy, freedom and rights – wants to attend lectures, because he or she has paid for that, he doesn’t care about protests, or the government, and lecturers are obliged to deliver the lecture to that person alone. No one can hinder that only student to do so, let alone a handful of individuals, who don’t know what they are asking for, or keep protesting because they have been told to do so and demand things that will never be met.
I see a lot of people calling on the government to pay the tuition fee for the students in the master degree programme too. This is impossible. We have already decided to cover 50 percent of the tuition fee for students with grade point average 9 to 10 in master degree programme and students from families being treated with social assistance. That’s all we can do! The society is not obliged to pay for you to gain a master degree. The society may be willing to pay and cover the cost of textbooks for primary school children so that they receive the textbooks for free, the society may be willing to pay the half of the tuition fee, but not forever and not for everyone. The poor students with grade point average 4 to 5 will be entitled to pay half of the tuition fee this year, but not a single penny will be paid by the government and the society for them should they fail to improve in the coming academic year. It is impossible for your parents, for us here and every other taxpayer to continue paying more in order for such poor performing students to continue wasting time in coffee bars and pretend that they are students. No, this won’t happen. But they will be given the opportunity to improve for the time being. But, to be clear, not a single penny will be paid for the grade failures.
Earning a master degree is a personal investment. You want to attend a master degree programme? Do it, but it comes with a cost. It’s a work-related practice, you know very well. Our calculations show that closure of betting shops leads to significant savings, and I am talking especially about the poor performing students, who spent their parents’ money in sports betting. Meanwhile, during the meetings with students, the difference between the Master of Arts and Master of Science degree has penalized many graduates. This issue should be tackled too together with many other issues and we will continue to dialogue – even after students will forget that a protest was staged – and will explain in detail every element through intensive dialogue in every university and every faculty. We will do so because our goal is to improve the higher education’s quality.
The same will happen about the on-campus student housing. There are many students who claim that nothing had changed in their dormitory building upon their return from the season holidays. It means they expected the dormitory buildings to be…where do they see these things? In what moves do they see such developments?
To conclude, I want to highlight the bad manners, the impoliteness. It is catastrophic! Unbelievable! Do you know what I do think whenever encountering this fact? I think about your parents. Albania may has gone through a lot of bad things, but a code of conduct and politeness has always prevailed even in the stone hoses in the country’s remotest areas among the mountains. A code of conduct in families with illiterate members. Highlanders living in the remotest areas, or residents living in coastal areas without any distinction have always adhered to a code of conduct and politeness in the family. Your parents sacrifice a lot.
A lot has been speculated over the household spending on education. Albania expenditure on education is estimated 3.1%, the highest in the region. Do you know why? Not because education in Albania is more expensive than in other country in the region, but because Albanians statistically spend more than any other nation per capita for educating their children abroad. We have the highest number of the graduates in foreign universities per capita. That’s why Albanians spend more. Everyone knows how much your parents sacrifice to earn this money, denying themselves a lot of things.
However, this is the student employment programme. It will become operational immediately. It includes some 800 job positions, mainly in the civil service, but data processing continues as I want the immovable property registration offices, the agency for legalization of the informal buildings, the tax and customs administration and other public service agencies to make every vacancy available to the best performing students and ask the others to wait. You will be waiting for two, three, and four years, and we will be talking to each other as long as I will be serving as Prime Minister, but once I will no longer be serving in this position, you will find no one to personally answer you via InstaStory.
The best performing students graduated from foreign universities will be given priority to pick first the job position they want. Students graduated from Albanian public universities will be the second to make their choice and private university graduates will be the third.
To make it clear. this is the order we have established. However, the whole procedure will be transparent.
Each of you who will be registered will have his or her own code and will be able to access and check all the interactions. If a job vacancy be announced as occupied, the whole process will be transparent. You will be able to check the required credits, that is the grade point average. No other criterion will be applied. We didn’t want to complicate the process and we have excluded interviews and written tests in order to avoid any prejudice. It just the grade point average 9 to 10 and these students and graduates will be employed to gain the required work experience. Then, everyone may take other steps to achieving their career ambitions and take executive positions in the public administration. If you take up the position of a specialist employee at the Ministry of Finance and aspire Want to grow and develop your career and assume the sector head position? Then you have to compete within the system. Do you want to take another job in various sectors of the public administration? Then you have to take a test. So, in order to gain the civil servant status, you have to take the due test. I mean, any of you will enter the civil service without having the civil servant status, who should take the test in order to be hired.
This is the platform, a result of my work as protester, and not a result of your protests, since you didn’t issue any demand on the students’ employment.
I am ready to answer your questions, if you have any. If you have anything out of this and you want to say it, just say it. I do not think I have to do issue that terrible warning about politeness.
I want to add something else. You already know that as soon as you will walk out of this meeting, you will be told that you are members of the Socialist Party Youth Forum? Did you take into account this when coming to this meeting?
Which are the criteria the students should meet in order to be eligible for a job position in the administration?
PM Rama: There is no other criterion, but the category. No student or university graduate with a grade point average lower than 9 and 10 can apply in this platform. Once you have applied, no other criterion, but the order according to the grade point average will be applied. For example, if you are graduated from the Faculty of Law. The Ministry of Justice has currently published 20 vacancies on the platform. What is your grade point average?
Student: 9.5.
PM Rama: Your grade point average is 9.5 and you have received a Bachelor degree. It is not true that you should have completed the Master Degree programme in order to be eligible for a job position in the Ministry. It is a lie. Even the law doesn’t stipulate it. More than 3500 people have entered the public administration to date after taking the test and not everyone has received a Master Degree. Many of them have completed the first cycle of studies only. To be more concrete, the majority of the job positions on offer in the Ministry of Justice require the Bachelor Degree only. If there are 50 applicants for 20 job vacancies, the first on top list should theoretically have a grade point average 10. He or she – and usually it is always a she – will have the right to choose the job position. After he or she takes up the job, there remain 19 other vacancies. Then the remaining positions are filled by other students with highest grade point average. But, it may happen that you with the grade point average 9.5 may not qualify for the job position, because the first 20 applicants have a higher grade point average. But you still may apply in another institution, the Power Distribution Operator (OSHEE), for example. It just like the case of the university when you apply and make 10 choices.
Albana Koçiu, Director of the Public Administration Department: It is important that whole this process takes place in the presence of all of those who have expressed interest in taking these job positions. Everyone will be there and the selection will start according the procedure that Prime Minister explained. Everything will be transparent. In addition to the publication on the website, everyone will be there also during the selection moment.
PM Rama: I know this is too good to be true, but this is what is going to happen. It is a great opportunity, for me personally, that in this way we put an end to the political hiring in the public administration once and for all. Because there will be no vacant job position in the government that children won’t have the right to choose. I am sorry for using the word ‘children’, but I was thinking about the poor parents, who do whatever it takes for you. So, the best performing students and graduates will be entitled to choose first, so that we no longer hear the true story that no door is open to the best ones, but to those who join a party or enjoy the support of the “right middleman”. This story will end with this system. Every job vacancy in the government will be made available to the best ones regardless of their political convictions, affiliations and sympathies.
I am graduated from the Tirana University and I have received the Bachelor and the Master of Science Degree in Economics. I have tried many times to apply for the job vacancies announced by the Public Administration Department, but the only criterion penalizing me was the work experience. First of all, I would like to express my gratitude for providing the university to every student, but I would like to ask you what will happen once the one-year contract expires?
Albana Koçiu: This work experience will absolutely will be very helpful and it will be added to your CVs. It is definitely a work experience that will be recognized upon any potential application you may file, not only in the public administration, but everywhere else. Meanwhile, you have gained sufficient expertise in the institution you will later join as part of the internship programmes and the vacancies in the Civil Service that will be announced and for which you should take a test will be available to anyone who already has a work experience in the administration and which scores better compared to another applicant who has gained experience in a private entity.
PM Rama: Bear the difference in mind. A part of the public administration, or the civil service, enjoy the civil service status. The rest of the state administration is treated under the Labour Code and as such it is not the same system. This programme, according to a merit-based system, allows you to benefit and not be excluded upon application due to the lack of work experience. The truth is that the law is fair, but it is still premature for Albania in this respect, as it prevents people like you from joining the public administration, where other persons who don’t deserve it at all have occupied positions in the administration. However, the law is right. You can’t work in the public administration of states like France or Germany if you don’t have a work experience. What we are doing it is exactly this; paving you the way by introducing an element that can be legally questionable, but this is the result of the protest as it shuns such discussions and allows you to gain the required experience in order to reconfirm your position in the Civil Service. But no such confirmations are needed in that part of the administration treated under the Labour Code. You should bear in mind that you have to compete with your peers who will be graduated during the academic year 2019-2020, as they should also be provided an opportunity to join the public administration. Yet you will enjoy the advantage of work experience. If you really want to consolidate your positions in the administration, you will certainly have a greater advantage over other applicants who take part in the test as outsiders.
When we can begin filing our applications?
Albana Koçiu: The vacancies will be announced starting today and during the period from January 11 to February 11, and by carefully looking at each deadline, you are all invited to apply.
PM Rama: Keep in mind that you can file a complaint with the platform “Albania We Want” should you find out that something is going wrong with this portal. You will be provided a reply within ten days. If what your complaint about is something that you are really entitled to, then it will be absolutely resolved. It may happen that the system may run into problems, but the experience with the portals, and the university admissions portal in particular, has shown that no mistakes are made. Imagine how many students enter the university and not a single complaint is received.
I am a Bachelor degree holder graduated from the Social Science Faculty in 2014 and I am about to complete the Master degree programme at the same faculty. Before making my question, please allow me to express my opinion on the situation. I am very pleased with the attention being placed on our country’s education system. To me, this is a puzzle missing many pieces, while many other pieces were damaged and not working properly. Employment of the excellent students has certainly been one of the missing pieces of this puzzle and I am very optimistic about this initiative, but I remain sceptical about the initiative’s practical aspect and I would like to know which will be the concrete room left for the excellent students still in the process of completing the Master programme. Meanwhile, another question came to my mind while listening you and it is about the fact that the average grade today is calculated mathematically, whereas the performance of the previous graduates was calculated according to another formula, which practically lowered our grade point average. How it will be proceeded in such a case?
PM Rama: I would delegate the mathematic thing to the ladies here since experience has shown that women are more trustworthy in mathematics.
First, being sceptical is quite normal. Protests all over the democratic world – I am talking about peaceful protests and not the armed protests – the peaceful protestors take to the streets to make their voice heard. The protest is an instrument to raise an issue and include it on the agenda of the society or the government or the relevant authority it addresses to. And it is not the protestors who should beg the government for dialogue, but the government should beg protestors to sit and talk. Both sides sit to talk in order to understand each other and do things together. In fact, the tariff cut was a demand, but what resulted from it is something different from the student demand, in terms of forwarding a demand. And it is not about halving the kilograms, but halving the tuition fee on the Bachelor degree programme, which was not included on the student demands list, but we did it. This is the system of those who dare, have strong will and work hard, and not the system of those who always complain. This is the system we have chosen, the system of the best and most capable ones. And when someone suffers from a physical disability, it is the government that provides support for him or her in order to ensure that he or she are not disadvantaged compared to the rest.
In this concrete case the applications commence today and 800 vacancies have been announced, but a second cycle will open in August and September to provide an employment opportunity for the students who will graduate this year and in the coming years too. We launched the student career and employment programme in the Civil Service first, but it will expand further. Meanwhile, we are taking stock of all opportunities, because things cannot be done in the blink of an eye. We are making an inventory of all vacancies in other government agencies. But we plan to expand further. What I am saying now doesn’t help me to lure more voters, but I don’t care about it. I’ve always hated this history of political hiring in public administration in exchange of votes. It is the vilest act against your country and the perspective of your country as it hampers you from building the state. Whoever is currently part of the civil service without a due university diploma should now resign and leave should there will be applications from better professionals. We will do this and you will see for yourselves that this will be done gradually.
Lindita Nikolla: The arithmetic average and the grade point average is related to the previous state matura system. The grade point average system has been applied upon your admission to the university. With the new system in place, a new measurement unit is being applied.
PM Rama: I want to clarify on a matter that I have been frequently asked about recently. Is the grade average point or the weighted average mark in an academic year the condition to benefit a 100% payment for the tuition fee and scholarship? The condition is the weighted average mark in an academic year. If you are a first grader with a weighted average mark 9 -10, then you are entitled to a scholarship and the tuition fee is covered 100 percent by the government. If you have a weighted average mark 8.5, then you will benefit a reduced tuition fee of 50%, but if you improve your performance and your weighted average mark increases to 9 and 10, then the tuition fee will be completely covered by the government and you will benefit a scholarship next year. The goal is that a student improves performance.
I am currently attending the Master of Science programme on Engineering Software. I am sorry to admit, but I am an excellent student for years, but this is the first time I am invited to be here and I am pleased with this, although rather late. Will the government provide support for students who for a reason or another have chosen to attend private universities?
PM Rama: I am sorry too that these things were not done before I took over as a Prime Minister, so that it wouldn’t have been necessary at all for me to become a Prime Minister. It would have been much better so. However, I am also very pleased we are here together and we are talking about it.
This system is also open to the best performing students from the private universities. Yet they should know that students graduated from the public universities are entitled to choose first. So, a public university graduate with a grade point average 10 is the first to make his or her choice and then the excellent students from private universities. It is us who did this difference, us who are here to “destroy public university, acting as saboteurs in interest of the private sector.” There is no other choice. I completely disagree with them who claim that the state should become a power to destroy competitiveness between the public and private sector. No one should forget that your parents are the taxpayers of this system and the parents of the students who attend private university pay taxes for the public system and deserve to have their children equally treated. The reason for this choice lies with this historic stage of higher education and in the process of consolidating university positions in terms of their accreditation.
I want to highlight something else too and I would ask for the Minister’s help to explain this. I have read a lot of stories suggesting that private universities have been accredited only. I will give the floor to the Education Minister to explain it, because it is extremely untrue.
Lindita Nikolla: Just like the Prime Minister noted, this is not only untrue, but I want to say that thanks to the Higher Education Law we ensured that institutional accreditation of the country’s public universities. All public universities were not accredited, meaning that students, parents, whole society, and the universities themselves were uninformed on the level of their quality standards. Today, all public and private universities have been accredited by a British leading agency, which verifies the quality standards of European universities and a wider region. Not only did we make institutional accreditation of universities – I believe you have followed the public debate about happened with some universities, including the University of Tirana – but let me tell you that British accreditors were in a terrible situation because the universities were left in a free fall from those who pretend today to be the defenders of public universities. There is not a single document or report showing “how much” and “how” these universities were performing in terms of quality. The universities have been given the required tome to prepare the information and fulfil the recommendations made by the British accrediting agency. The British agency has also enabled a professional training programme for the Albanian Quality Assurance Agency in Higher Education (ASCAL), to assist it in efforts to advance towards ENKA membership.
The new law on Higher Education has set the same standards and criteria for public universities, as well as for private universities, in terms of quality standards, which means that it is not only quality standards will be verified and accreditation of new programs in private universities will be facilitated, as it has been the case. We closed down 22 private universities, yet we are being accused as defenders of the private universities. Meanwhile, those who accredited some 40 programmes at the private universities turn out to be staunch defenders of the public sector.
What we and the Quality Assurance Agency in Higher Education are doing is exactly the accreditation of the public university programmes. We are working to fulfil the recommendations made by the British agency about the institutional accreditation according to certain deadlines. On the other hand, accreditation of the programme studies. Meanwhile, you already know that the government has placed priority to the teaching and vocational studies programmes and we are making progress in terms of their verification and accreditation as soon as possible. All higher education institutions that present two-year programmes are given priority for their accreditation. As many as 47 new two-year programmes are currently underway and they will provide more progress and more access to the labour market. The programmes are designed to address the lacking academic offer and meet the labor market needs for skilled specialists. I reiterate, it is completely untrue that the Higher Education Law hampers the programmes accreditation. Quite the contrary. The law forces the government, the Ministry of Education and the Quality Assurance Agency in Higher Education to accredit programmes in the public universities too. So, the ongoing programmes should undergo this verification process.
Thank you!
I am a student at the Faculty of Medical Sciences, Nursing Department. First of all, I want to express appreciation for taking into consideration our demands. I find really interesting the employment platform for excellent students. But we didn’t become excellent today. We work with a very high performance for years. The question I have for you is why today did you decide to evaluate these students?
PM Edi Rama: Just like your parents, I would also have wished for everything to be done in the blink of an eye. However, this is impossible. I will recall a message from a young man who had voted for me as he hoped and expected a lot from me, but then he decided to emigrate to Great Britain for a number of reasons. I told him: “You are right, because Albania is today poorer than five years ago; security and order has deteriorated compared to five years ago; Albania offers less support for students etc.” And the answer was: “No, absolutely not. I am not drawing any comparison to five years ago, but to what I thought and expected you to do.”
A famous general has said: ” The day the soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you stopped leading them, because they have lost confidence that you can do things.” And as long as they expect things from, then you have to do it. But there is one thing that is very clear. No such protests could even be imagined five and a half years ago.
You know quite well this. Your parents can help you to understand it, if you don’t know it. No one could ever imagine five years ago a Prime Minister saying: “I am ready to dialogue.” A hunger strike was staged right at the heart of the boulevard five years ago and no dialogue took place, not to mention then that you should consider also coming back home with your ribs broken or, God forbid it, you could never come back home.
It happens that when a leftist government is in office, there is always room for better, while when a rightist administration is in office, there can always be worse. The problem is bigger in my case, because now there is nothing that cannot be done. There are people who say: “Do it and do it now, because if you don’t then you are just like them, even worse.” The employment programme of the excellent students was not launched previously for a simple reason, because law hinders it. What we are doing today is extralegal. We had to discuss the matter with our partners in the European Commission and tell them that this move shuns the law, because no one can join the civil service without taking the test first. It runs counter the law, yet we can’t afford telling this young people that you can’t take government jobs as you lack due experience and therefore you should leave the country and emigrate to Germany, because you need work experience if you wish to take a job position here. We will provide these young boys and girls the opportunity to gain this work experience. But it was your protest that helped us to do so. Don’t think I haven’t been discussing this. A lot of people have come to my office asking “what is this?” This is what they want for me not to leave. If I don’t make way for them, then I will leave, but things will go worse for them. For the country too.
You should also bear in mind that it has to do with the system too. If you are to analyze the university today, it is certainly not the one we inherited five years ago in terms of its organization, yet results are far from being the ones we want and results can’t be achieved within such a short time. Don’t forget the situation we inherited five years ago. The number of students has tripled, but without tripled opportunities. How is then possible to house a threefold number of students in the same infrastructure and then pretend to have a normal functioning of that infrastructure?
Things should be done gradually, step by step. We should increase the grade point average in order for the students to enter university. But we will provide an opportunity to students with a grade point average 7 and 7.5 by offering the option of vocational education. That’s why we will build vocational colleges and develop vocational training programs in order to develop required skills and meet the labor market demands. Today, 28 years later, we have started to think about the university and the labour market.
We have the largest number of lawyers per square kilometer and we cannot export them. At least we would export legal opinion abroad. Some of them have been graduated from “Kristal” University. These are lost parents’ investments and this has not happened 50 years ago, but five years ago only.
Merging these two is a process. I’m giving you a very extreme example, but it shows how it should work. Switzerland has the Ministry of Education and Economy merged into one single ministry. It’s one of the rare cases. The education quota, programmes and whole vocational training and academic planning are developed according to the plans of businesses operating in Switzerland. So, private companies present their investment plans and determine the number of qualified and skilled specialists needed in this respect. In other words, the business plans are translated into education policies to graduate the exact number of people needed for these plans. These are complex things and their implementation takes time and patience, because nothing can be done immediately.
[Inaudible]
PM Edi Rama: I think it is quite easy to make comments when assuming no responsibility of whatsoever. Yet it is a little difficult to speak when facing numbers and more difficult when you have to develop policies based on these numbers.
To increase the budged spending on education, you have to raise taxes.
The state budget on education has increased. In 2013, the state budget on higher education was estimated at around 51 million euros, while today it amounts to over 80 million euros. The tax contribution in Albania is 28 lek, while in Germany it is estimated at 48 euros.
Do you see the difference? You should also keep in mind that Albania has the lowest income tax rate than any country. The income tax rate in Albania is 5,5 %. The income tax rate in Germany is 48 to 52 %. Countries in the region apply a 10 percent income tax. Serbia, Mali i Zi, and Kosovo apply an income tax rate from 9 to 10 %. Your parents pay only 5.5 percent in income tax, while five years ago they paid 10 percent. This is a matter of choice.
The education spending is calculated according to percentage in GDP, but also it is calculated according to the percentage of the state budget allocated for the education system. I can tell you that the state budget spending on education in Albania is around 10.1 to 10.2 percent, which is the normal European average compared to our budget. Of course, the needs are much greater. It is just like your homes. How many things you would have wished to be different at your homes? Why your parents don’t do them? Why don’t you tell them: “I am the future and give me what I want?” Why you don’t? For a simple reason. Because you know that these are all what your parents can afford. The same goes for the country. Some people say: “Don’t build the Big Ring Road and provide the funding to students instead.” But investments generate revenue. The new roads, schools, hospitals will be there for 100 years, whereas money would dry up if wasted. In order for you to spend, you should first earn. But how is the economy going to earn? Taxes are revenues from profits, but profits can grow only by investing. If you don’t invest, then you earn nothing.
So, be sure of one thing. Neither the protest, nor the speeches, nor the statements are an added contribution in relation to me or to us to understand the importance of education. Here is the question of decision-making and the capacity to make reforms and to sacrifice today, so that others have more tomorrow. Albania has experienced a time when the country’s economy was seen as a refrigerator that should be emptied in one day, although there was stored the food for whole month. Once upon a time, when you were kids, when people were encouraged to put their money into some popular banks and the government told them keep playing, because the money of Albanian citizens is clean. In the end, the country plunged into a terrible crisis.
There is no magic wand. Therefore, we should keep reforming, working and be patient.
Thank you!
