Statement by the Vice President of the Freedom Party, Erisa Xhixho.
According to her, Tirana, which is presented by the Prime Minister as a European success story, in reality turns out to be the second most expensive city in Europe, where the average monthly salary is not enough to make it through the month.
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She stresses that the figures are shocking.
According to the statement, a family of four, in which two adults are paid the average salary, is forced to use 89% of its income just for a normal standard of living, including food, rent and basic expenses. This, according to her, means that Albanian families are left with only 11% of their income for savings, investment, dealing with emergencies or even holidays.
Xhixho says that comparison with the region makes the failure of this governance even more evident. She says that in Skopje a family spends 67% of its monthly income on living expenses, while in Belgrade it is 68.2%. Also according to her, Albanian families with the official average monthly net salary of 760 euros, if they live alone, must spend at least 853 euros a month, which means they spend more than the salary they receive.
She describes the housing situation as equally dramatic, stressing that Tirana ranks as the second least affordable city in Europe according to the rent-to-salary ratio. According to her, rents consume more than 93% of local salaries and this clearly shows that for young people, young couples and ordinary families, housing has turned into an unattainable luxury.
The statement says that the government and the municipality continue to build a city for a handful of people who, according to her, have turned the construction sector into the main sector for laundering drug money and corruption proceeds.
She adds that public transport remains primitive and does not cover entire areas of Tirana. For this reason, according to her, for thousands of families a car is not a luxury, but a necessity to take children to school, to kindergarten or to go to work.
According to Xhixho, as soon as citizens buy a car, they immediately face another problem created by this governance: the lack of parking.
She states that in a city where construction is carried out without criteria on every square meter, 84% of Tirana residents constantly face difficulties finding a parking space. In the Municipality of Tirana’s parking facilities alone, according to her, citizens pay around 7 million euros a year. Meanwhile, in total, across all paid parking in the capital, citizens pay around 15 million euros a year, not including informal payments and parking costs in neighborhoods.
According to her, citizens not only live in one of the most expensive cities in Europe, but are also forced to pay millions of euros every year for parking, which has turned into an extraordinary cost and a daily concern amid the total chaos of a city that, according to her, has become unlivable.
She describes this as the real Tirana.
According to the statement, this is the Tirana that still does not have water 24 hours a day.
Likewise, she says this is the Tirana where there are still schools in which students study in two shifts.
She adds that this is the Tirana where public transport is far from European standards and where parking is a luxury.
According to her, this is also the Tirana where families cannot afford to buy a home, while every day new towers rise where one square meter costs at least 5,000 euros.
Xhixho states that while citizens struggle to cope with living expenses, the government continues to favor a development model that, according to her, serves money laundering, corruption and a handful of people connected to power.
She says these are just some of the reasons why hundreds of thousands of citizens are protesting every day today. According to her, Tirana has become unlivable for the majority and privileged for the minority, because citizens refuse to accept a capital where 89% of income goes to survival, where rents take more than 93% of salaries, where 84% of residents cannot find parking and where 15 million euros a year are paid for a service that is missing.
According to the statement, every citizen has a major family hardship that has brought them to that square.
She lists that someone has had their property stolen, someone is unemployed, someone’s children have left the country, someone is paid so little that they cannot even cover medicine and other expenses, someone cannot send their children to school because of rising costs, while someone else has a business but, according to her, is being crushed by the government through corruption and taxes.
In the end, Xhixho says there is only one solution, only one perspective and only one path: the departure of EDI RAMA and the most plundering government that, according to her, Albania’s history has ever seen.
