Reporting at last?!!
The Urban Development Ministry has reported to the Parliament regarding the performance of the law on “Legalization, urbanization and integration of illegal constructions” and e new bill, which will try to include in its garb constructions made from 2009 until now. According to the minister, this is necessary in order to bring an ending to informality through the legalization process. In her report Mrs. Germenji put a lot of numbers, a well-known policy to compare the failures of the previous government. She highlights that: “In just 12 months, thanks to ALUIZNI employees dedication to serve the citizens and thanks to citizen collaboration, for the May 2014 – May 2015 period, we legalized 32.900 objects, which means an average of 2.500 per month”. Not to question that this ministry has been very active nor the reform nor the fact that the new offices opening is a necessity, what we expect from a serious institution, which pretends to have been cooperating with citizens and has done terrain studies, is at least a statistical database published on the official website of the ministry.
On the other hand, even though the new bill by rights highlights that the legalization problematic in many cases is closely related to lack of housing and extreme poverty, it is not clear what integration space will be attempted in the cases of illegal constructions and flagrant violations. What’s the point of informality eradication if the constructions haven’t been respecting, not only urban regulations, but even engineering ones. In fact this is a problem not even mentioned by this ministry. We still don’t have any attentions towards constructions development in line with architectural and engineering regulations that inserts in the law in question a wide problematic related to citizen security, since the majority of constructions are done without any assigned plans. Still there is no differentiation between constructions built from necessity and those built for economic exploitation interests. We didn’t hear from the abovementioned report about any punishment on offenders as persons or institutions. Albanian citizens shouldn’t wait the so-called national strategy, to know their fate.
Let’s hope that the new bill opens a large-scale debate, where the abovementioned dilemmas can be addressed.
Public hearings
Citizens’ involvement in decision-making processes is always a welcomed policy, but naturally when it serves a stated aim. Usually on the ministry’s official web page this kind of paragraph can be found: “Public hearings continue under the project “Urbanization and social-enviromental integration of informal areas, towards awareness and community participation” that MZHU and REC in collaboration with NJQV and ALUIZNI, have been taken for some informal areas in the whole country.”
Informal Constructions, Legalization and Urbanization Directorate specialists had a hearing on July 15th with the habitants of the informal area, “Lagje Nr. 1” Sarande. The meeting was an open discussion with citizens and their involvement in the urbanization and integration process. What usually changes is only the place of the meeting, since no information is given on the problems that citizens have or how this is going to be implemented on the specified policies from the ministry.
Meanwhile cities, which have been included in building projects, droop from the urban massacre and the IKMT demolitions. The latter doesn’t clean the ruins left behind. We ask ourselves, has this ministry ever thought about having a building plan before it engages the demolishing part?
References:
1- Webi Zyrtar i Ministrise se Zhvillimit Urban
2- Webi Zyrtar i Ministrise se Zhvillimit Urban: Lajme