The government launches a public accountability campaign to take a look at many accomplishments in first 6 months of second term in office and discuss intensive efforts to push forward the reform agenda and further strengthen co-governance with the citizens.

Following is the Prime Minister Edi Rama’s full remarks at the first meeting in Tirana:

Thank you very much for the welcome and the patience under this not so generous sun!

We launch today a country-wide campaign with basically the only thing differing from an election campaign is that no vote will take place at its end. We will visit all administrative units across the country to directly communicate with the citizens of all ages and social categories and take stock of what we have accomplished over these six months and what we plan to do in the future, but at the same time listen their opinions on our performance and the ways to further expand the close cooperation with the citizens and improve our work.

This is a process we launch today in Tirana, where we are all aware that a lot remain still to be done, but yet I am confident that only those unwilling to see and listen could negate and refuse to acknowledge what has already been done. The campaign will touch upon all aspects and it indisputably forms good solid basis for the future.

I would like to very briefly highlight the infrastructure projects and works we plan to push forward in the coming months; road infrastructure, education infrastructure, health infrastructure. There are 3 new school buildings that will add to the 17 schools already under construction in the Municipality of Tirana.

Meanwhile, the healthcare centres in Tirana will also undergo transformation. We plan to transform more than 300 health care centres by 2021, 80 of which starting this year and a considerable number of them here in Tirana.

Likewise, regarding the security issues, I can say we are increasingly expanding to the community through a new and long-awaited and welcome approach, the community policing to allocate police structures closer to the community.

What we should strongly put the emphasis on is the necessity to intensively pres ahead not only with our work, but also the communication with the citizens on employment and job creation policies. The National Employment Program will be introduced during this campaign, not as a strategy, but a detailed program, and we will be explaining and highlighting the new employment opportunities that will be created in each sector of the country’s economy. Just a day ago, at the National Job Fair we closely witnessed, and I hope a significant number of citizens, either directly or through the media saw too,  we are living in a period when the companies are creating new jobs and need workers of all categories in the sectors of manufacture, banking system, telecommunication companies, IT sector which is constantly expanding.

What remains a major challenge is the intensification of interactions between the employment service offices and the private companies in order to ensure placement for registered jobseekers.

The employment service offices exceeded the employment target last month and the goal of finding a job to 25 000 jobseekers until end of year is feasible.

It is also a major challenge to raise awareness among jobseekers, and young jobseekers in particular, that the government is not an employer, but job generator. It means we have to strongly combat the mentality that a government job solely is a real job and choosing between the two, when the first is absent, people opt to waste time in coffee bars instead of taking up a job in the private sector, although, rightfully, people raise various concerns over what should be done to improve work relations within the private sector.

We should keep on pushing for the vocational education and training. A large number of people address to employment service offices and are willing to take up a job but for many reasons lack the right skills for a certain job position. They are physically fit, but they lack special skills to start a job. For this group of people, we have increased volume of vocational training courses; we have established a new cooperation system with the private companies to finance vocational training. According to this cooperation system a jobseeker who wants to work, but lacks skills to start a job in a certain company, he will receive funding from the government, a payment higher than the current average social assistance payment for one, two, three months to gain sufficient professional skills and succeed in the labour market.

We are at a stage, where certainly a lot more remain to be done and one should never forget that in relation to building the Albania we want we are still far away, but compare to the Albania we had, today, we all have reason to be not only proud, but optimistic, as let us not forget we have achieved a major goal, that is receiving a positive, unconditional recommendation from the European Commission to open the EU accession negotiations.

Many can make comments, which may also raise different questions, or may create the idea that this has been an easy thing. Trust me, this has been really a difficult thing, which has been accomplished thanks to the reforms and thanks to the extraordinary work we have done, because the European Commission is not an institution that gives indulgence or makes gestures of generosity. It is not an institution that makes strict political decisions. It is an institution that assesses ​​facts and figures of progress in every respect.

It’s about objective assessments a whole team of experts and analysts works for – true analysts unlikely the ones you’re forced to listen to on TV every night, while I, fortunately, do not receive the signal of those TV channels where these people try to blacken the white and whiten the black.

We have also accomplished a major objective clearing the way for the vetting process.

We all know how much efforts it took to clear the path towards the justice system reform. A profound, extremely difficult reform that many did not even think it could ever take place in Albania let alone to launch and implement such an overhaul of the justice system.

But you all already know and remember well that for months long people had to go around, because they were denied walking along the main thoroughfare because of a tent that had blocked the boulevard and it stood between the current Albania and the Albania we want to hamper the vetting process and beginning of full implementation of the true justice reform.

Now the vetting process is underway. You see the results every day through public information channels and they will further deepen. The corrupt judges and prosecutors are being removed from the country’s justice system. Whoever fails to justify the source of his or her wealth, fails to show integrity of the past decisions, fails to demonstrate professional competence will no longer be part of the justice system. This is a strong motive to be optimistic about the future.

Meanwhile, all of those who say: This was it; it is over! So, how it is possible these people amassing mindboggling wealth escape by leaving the system? I tell them this is just the beginning.

This is just the beginning, what we expect to achieve through this process is building a truly independent system, truly independent, effective and truly valiant on the basis of all the attributes that the Constitution provides, ensuring that everyone, without exception, prosecutors and judges alike, because it is them and politicians as well who, for 28 years now have been doing nothing but accusing  each other and have created the idea that we are all the same, should now face this system and finally separate the wheat from the chaff, because nowhere, either in any community and in any forest, beings are the same.

We have still a lot to do, we still need to improve a lot of things and all of these can be done by preserving relations with the citizens, by keeping high the desire and readiness to listen to the peoples’ concerns and, above all, by developing passion for work and serve the citizens.

The sooner and more committed we are to address the problems of each citizen in this country, the sooner we will fulfil our common ambition. To this end, the platform co-governance with the citizens is a secure instrument that ensures direct contact and relation between the relevant minister and each individual, either in the city of town, either rich or poor.

Urging you all to make use of this platform and stop wasting time by complaining and trying to find a middleman to address tour problems, I invite you to take just three minutes to write down your complaint on the platform with the guarantee that within 10 days they will receive the answer they deserve and if they deserve what they are looking for, they will get what they are asking for.

I would like to thank you all and I hope that during the process that starts today we will have as much as more contact and learn more from you and everyone who will deign to listen us.

Thank you!