Thethi, in the heart of the Alps, is the next area, whose residents received the long-awaited ownership certificates, inherited between generations, among them a Church.

Prime Minister Rama returned to Theth, after a month from his last visit, to share this news with the residents and to personally deliver the property titles to some of them, a process which will last throughout the following day.

With the systematic problems already solved, the whole area will release step by step the extraordinary potential of mountain tourism, which has turned Thethi into a source of real economy for its residents.

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Greetings and nice to see you again! As I promised you last time at the end of the month, we would be back and here we are today, not just to talk, but to distribute the much awaited ownership certificates. The truth is that a long work for areas like yours is now in its last steps, and step by step what we are doing here, we will also do in those other areas, either in the north or in the south, as in the case of Himara, for example, and maybe you saw that yesterday we were in Himara.

There are 200 titles that are here, a small part we will distribute directly now, the rest you will be able to get later in the day. Those who can’t wait to continue to get it, we will get it immediately after the meeting, while there are 90 other titles. For a part of them, 40 if I’m not mistaken, the municipality of Shkodra will have to make a change, the study of the area, which is a matter of a legal nature but it is not difficult and I think that the mayor will finish it within the month of September and for the other 50 titles, it is the problem of construction on their property. Of course, here we will find a solution, which will be dedicated to all those who are in your conditions, where the impossibility of obtaining a permit has been serious.

The second one, which you raised in the meetings we had last time and I remember the gentleman here we met above, is the issue of fines.

There exists here a very large amount of fines, which were imposed as a result of interventions or constructions, always where you had your old house or where you have your land, which were made due to the need to create an economy through tourism and which they were not built according to the law, not because you didn’t want to build them according to the law, but because the tightening of the legislation for this area that appears as a protected natural area has made it impossible and the government will forgive all these fines these are not constructions made abusively against the law.

This does not mean that whoever puts a stone without permission will be tolerated, it means that at that stage when these happened, there was, in fact, not even an attention from the municipality, zero, because the municipality is very important in this process and one of the reasons why this is happening today and has not happened before is not the will of the government, because very often people have a hard time understanding this and people always have the tendency to look up at the top, to the government and possibly to the prime minister’s office for a water supply problem in a neighborhood. There are still many people today who keep saying “Why are you working on Shkodra so late?” We have not been given the opportunity to do more because it is impossible for the government to do something, without the will and cooperation of the municipality.

Thethi is a European tourist destination and you must feel and understand that you have a responsibility and a mission beyond your home, because the more you are aware of this, the more you will guard, in the good sense of the word, all the work that is done here. You know well that the project we did with the Albanian Development Fund for the repair of roofs and for the return of many roofs to identity, has brought you much more power to attract tourists, but what if someone goes and makes a roof with red tiles like in the south, then it breaks the whole harmony.

The same thing with infrastructure in the sense of what I said “being a guard” so that the things that are made are preserved, protected, not destroyed. I believe that within the year the road of Dukagjini will be finished, it will open another perspective, it will open another magical area that is practically unvisitable or today it is visited with great difficulty due to that infrastructure, but it will open another space for the investments of residents and many people who are emigrating. And we’re finishing up that mountain package that I told you about when I came here, so that we can give all of those who are in exile a chance to come back because the mayor was telling me that there’s an ever-increasing demand to return and to invest in their land. That is why we are building a special program for the mountains so that they can be given land, they can be given the opportunity to build with permission before they receive the final ownership title, in a direct relationship with the state, with that famous lease of 1 euro. We will make another intervention at the bank to put a state guarantee on your loans, because I saw some agreements with banks of a few people here with very high interest rates, here too we will make an intervention to ease it and in this way close the whole cycle and give opportunities to those outside to invest here.

I take advantage of the opportunity, as you know, but those who follow us do not. The chefs here in Theth receive up to 2 thousand euros salary per month. On the other hand here he doesn’t even need to have a house for rent, as he does when he works in the kitchen in Greece, nor does he have to go get his car come from work to home, from home to work and consume fuel daily. He doesn’t even have to pay taxes like those paid by the person who receives those 2,000 euros and who sometimes receives nothing at all, because he receives much less in Greece at the end of the month.

Today we will not end this meeting by giving the ownership certificates only, but we will also present the new investment plan that we will make here. It is a plan worked out by the municipality with a group of talented architects and for which we have also prepared the necessary fund to start and to further improve the common infrastructure here and address some of those problems that you have. I believe that the present of Theth and of everyone who invests in argotourism in Albania is very clear, and the future will be extraordinary. The number of tourists you see is growing impressively, but what we have to understand is that we have to give the tourists quality, we have to give them things that they can’t find anywhere else and for that we need great cooperation.

There are 200 who will receive the ownership title. We will start from the unexpected, from the Church.

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After handing over the property title for the Church in the area, Prime Minister Rama said:

Thank you very much, Patër! Since you mentioned this work of the youth, many say “the youth is gone, there are no more young people”. Of course, many young people have fled, they are in their right to do so, but here there are about 250 of us and the oldest is me. All this youth that is here, is not the youth that we brought by bus “as we did in Greece”. These are all people who are here and they are the vast majority very young. I am less young and this is an indication of the fact that these young people here are not idle.

Stay because there are about 150 hostels today and they will all be done and they will flourish more and more and I am telling you that in a few years, Thethi will be a destination, not only European, not only with many tourists, but it will be a destination where tourists will have to pay a lot to sleep for a night. It will be the top class destination we need for tourists.