Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama at the presentation of the 2016 Employment programs:
The most meaningful speech of today, even more than my speech, was that of the entrepreneur who has hosted us here, a person representing an enterprise, which is really a genuine artisan laboratory operating with a closed cycle from the conception of the samples to the installation of lighting products in different premises.
His testimony is the core of the issues that our country is facing today in terms of work and employment. There are jobs, there is a need for jobs, but there are no professionals and craftsmen who can meet these needs. Unemployed people who have no clue about this craft, or who have a law degree, cannot meet the need for electricians, for millers, fitters, turners or for assemblers of panels in this enterprise.
I felt very embarrassed when I heard a professor, a distinguished thinker, saying: who are they? – meaning us – How can they ask Albanians to learn a craft, or be employed as apprentice at a private company, although they have degrees? This is the problem, and this is what we have sown in years, an unprecedented farce and falsity, first of all towards the parents, who have invested their savings to educate their children, and second to the children who had the green light to take the high-speed highways and enter universities, where everybody could park, but where eventually everybody earned a degree that, most of the time, is totally worthless. A diploma that says that someone is a lawyer, but in all probability that someone is half illiterate.
Let’s go back a bit in the past. If politics, in its blind running after the vote, in its taking a dead end such as the elimination of the entire system of vocational education and the creation of a pyramid system of universities, hadn’t committed this crime, but had it built the state and had it reformed the vocational education system 25, 20, 15, 10 years ago, and had it connected it with the enterprise, not only would we have had fewer problems in this aspect today, so it would have been a partially-solved problem, but we would have been a country whose skilled labour force would establish a precedent for many more private investments, both domestic and foreign.
It’s easy to complain about investments going to Macedonia, but do you know how persistently has Macedonia invested for years, to have craftsmen? Meanwhile, my question is another one: How come that in 20 years, when everybody knew, as everybody knows, which the sources of growth and the strategic economic areas to invest money are, ranging from energy, oil and minerals, we didn’t have even one newly-qualified engineer, not to mention middle-level technicians? Actually, if we look at foreign companies processing energy and oil, their middle-level technicians and engineers are either foreigners, or any of the technicians that graduated during the dictatorship period, who are like that Japanese soldier who didn’t know that war was over, because all the others have moved to Canada and work there.
While here, we have plenty of lawyers and that’s why justice here has had a better performance than any other sector. We have the highest number of lawyers per square meter in the world. There is a lawyer every seven meters, and this is the only country where s/he says “I’m unemployed, I’m a taxi driver or a guard, but I am also a lawyer.”
On the other hand, it is a fact that we have a great opportunity to grow exports in agriculture, livestock, not to mention the fact that we have an absolutely safe opportunity to develop this sector, to increase production capacity in the country. But what happens? There are no butchers in Korca. There is a plant, which I have had the honour to visit, with excellent high technology, ready to create a chain of jobs, because it is not just about who works there, but also about how many others have been employed indirectly, to bring in this enterprise the basic product. The growth of this plant has been hampered by the fact that there are no butchers. There are lawyers though, but the plant needs 50 butchers, not 50 lawyers. Lawyers can become butchers when they act as judges, but they cannot do that when they are required to cut and pack up meat.
Actually, in our employment offices across the country, there are today 26.800 and some dozen vacancies, to be exact. Of course, those are not vacancies for judges or lawyers, and neither can they solve the problem of having a salary while staying at home, which is one of the main aspirations of many parasites and lazy people who do nothing but complain about not having a job, and when you give them one, they say: Do you think I am going to do this?
I don’t think there is something else they can do, maybe there is, but I think it is pretty unlikely in any country in Europe where 70, 75, 80, 85-year old parents travel halfway across the country, such as those coming here in Tirana, and seek jobs for their 40-year old children. When asked why their children don’t come here themselves, their answer is: because he or she is very depressed. And if you ask them how they get by, the parents reply: I give him or her money.
In this view, at least as far as we are concerned, there is no room for pessimism, because we have taken a turn, we have made a reform that was strongly rejected from any kind of opponent or philosopher, and this reform has actually opened a new path. Figures have doubled, and I am convinced that the number of young people attending vocational schools this year will be the double of the double, because people have realized that learning a craft does not mean just having the opportunity to be employed as a worker, but you can also start your own business or your company. If Germany is an example at which all of us look, it is even in this aspect an absolutely fabulous example due to a simple truth: by having the most developed professional education and the strongest connection between schools and enterprises, it has the largest number of people who, having received a vocational education, have become small entrepreneurs. This means that they don’t just to go and work in a factory, but are hired thanks to their free initiative.
In the area of Korca there are 5 thousand registered job applications, of course there are many more unemployed people, but we mean those who are looking for an employment, not those who send their parents in Tirana to seek a job on their behalf, – that’s another story. There are 5 thousand applications, and 6 thousands vacancies in Korca, of all kinds. Obviously, there are also vacancies in the toll manufacturing, but I have an aversion to those people who despise this kind of work, and I have an aversion to those professors who say, how can Albanians do this kind of jobs?
I have seen many Albanian men and women do this kind of jobs and live by their dignified work, and contribute to their households at the end of the day. Out of respect for these people, I have an aversion to those Albanians who would not dirty their hands by doing such ordinary jobs. Yet, Albanians have crossed borders and performed the most difficult jobs abroad, instead of knocking at the door of an MP, of the party or of the relatives’. Look at them today. They have integrated and have earned the respect of the others, and if you need a craftsman in Greece, Albanians are the most needed and the most skilled workers. This is the reality. While here, the easiest way seems to be the one where you ask your mother to find you a state employment, or ask your 75-year old father come to Tirana along with his family history, and tell about the connections with the party, a relative, an MP or with the state, etc. We cannot satisfy such a request, because it has nothing to do either with our aspiration to build a functioning state or with our aspiration to give everybody an employment opportunity.
Employment programs are not sufficient, but their number is many times higher, whether in terms of financing or in terms of results, compared to 2 and a half years ago, and there is no doubt that it will continue to grow. But what we are convinced of, is that we must increase cooperation with the enterprise, we must increase interaction with entrepreneurs. We need also to increase infrastructure, logistic and human capacity of the vocational education system. We must create a vocational education that is intrinsically connected with enterprise. I am not against the dream of becoming a hairdresser, but this is only one aspect because, if the number of our hairdressers is equal to the number of our lawyers, our country will become the hair saloon of the planet, and everybody will come here to have their hair done. What I am talking about is a stronger connection between education and the need of the enterprise.
In this world where we want to be integrated, in this Europe at which we look with admiration and part of which we want to be, in the social German country, not only in conservative Britain, you cannot go on receiving financial support as unemployed, if you are physically fit to work and if you have been offered a job. You cannot say, “No, I don’t want this”, “I’m not going to work in toll manufacturing, in the meat processing industry, or in that of fruits and vegetables packaging”, or “I won’t work as a receptionist”, and continue getting the money of those who have accepted the job and contribute by paying taxes. Despite what spectators, professors, objectors or opponents say, the number of those who accept the job they are offered has increased and continues to increase in Albania, and today the number of employees recorded in the state payroll, namely the number of those who receive a salary and pay taxes, is 600 thousand compared to 430 thousand odd it was in 2013.
Of course, not all of them are newly created jobs; some of them are also jobs that have been formalized, but they are called new jobs because their standards comply with European standards in terms of employment. And all these people who pay taxes, do not pay taxes from their pockets. As long as you are unemployed, although physically fit to perform a job, but the state hasn’t offered you any, it is up to the state to support you. But the moment the sate offers you a job, you must accept it, because the state is not required to give you money so that you can keep hanging about on Facebook, in the cafeteria, gambling with the money of mummy or daddy, or play cards and ask a fortune teller when Albania is going to be like America, while you have America here but you’d better sponge off others. The state cannot fund such a dream.
