The territorial reform is going at another phase, that of having
consultations with the citizens. Local directors will start organizing
meetings with their communities and all the local actors, to let the
citizens know about the new territory initiative and for taking concrete
suggestions.
The Ministry of Local Administration has appealed the Prefects, association leaders and Mayors in these meetings. The Mayor of Tirana did not accept the invitation.
The International experts, coming from countries that are funding the reform, brought the example how this had been realized in these countries, where they have found political obstacles same as in Albania.
“When we started this reform, we didn’t have 100% of political consensus. We had a fragile majority in favor of the reform, with most of the local leaders not agreeing, since one of the effects of this reeform was making them lose their jobs. But they understood that it is better to have a stronger local unit that serves to them, than being part of powerless local units”, says Lars Ericsson, former Secretary of State in Sweden.
The Mayor of Pogradec, Artan Shkembi, who leads one of the local administration associations, brought a dim panorama of the local units today, with most of them not offering any service for the citizens and not having real decentralization for as long that they are funded by the government.
“The administrative reform needs to be a unification of parts that create a live mechanism. This could be realized by joining communes with municipalities, which could offer normal standards for the new unit and could serve as development locomotives even for other parts that are added to these units”, Shkembi declared.
“We want to make the reform serve to development in Albania, and not to close political interets. Each of us must contribute so that Albania can have the best administrative territorial model that answers and will answer to Albania’s development in at least 50 years”, declared Bledi Cuci, Minister of the Local Administration.
The division plans unifying the local units and creating 80 of them, from 385 in total. However, no project has been made public to show how the new administrative division of Albania might be.
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