Today, the Minister of State for Local Government held a ceremony at the Center for Openness and Dialogue (COD) in the Prime Minister’s Office to sign agreements in the areas of agriculture, health, and education as part of the decentralization process.
The mayors of four municipalities—Benet Beci of Shkodra, Ervin Demo of Berat, Erion Isai of Kolonja, and Josif Gorrea of Divjakë—signed an important agreement with the Minister of Education and Sports, Ogerta Manastirliu, on the decentralization of functions in pre-university education.

The responsible ministers, Albana Koçiu and Anila Denaj, also signed agreements on the decentralization of functions from the central to the local level in the areas of agriculture and health.

According to Minister Manastirliu, this opens a new era for the cities to increase their capacity to raise the level of education throughout the country.

“We are now opening the way for a new chapter, piloting the expansion of the current functions of the municipalities, where more competencies and functions will be delegated to the municipalities to achieve better results in specific areas, to achieve more quality in educational services and to ensure that schools strengthen the proper quality of teaching and that our human resources are as qualified as possible, thanks also to another eye that will monitor them in the field, which are the representatives of the local government,” said Ogerta Manastirliu, Minister of Education and Sports.

According to Minister Manastirliu, the agreement aims to improve the management of pre-university education.

“We want education to be of higher quality and to use more sophisticated teaching methods. Our goal is to inspect education programs more frequently. We also want to increase the number of community schools and the amount of money spent on school infrastructure and teaching methods. We will be able to expand the pilot program that we are running in four municipalities to more municipalities and make it operational in every municipality across the country to achieve the goals we have set for improving the school, which is the foundation of education. This is the goal,” said Ogerta Manastirliu, Minister of Education and Sports.

The aim of the pilot project in Shkodra, Berat, Divjakë, and Kolonjë is to test new models of decentralization and restructuring of educational services.

“It has been decided to implement this through a pilot process in three specific areas where municipalities can do more in education, health, and agriculture for one year. We look forward to the possibility of even greater decentralization to bring more functions closer to the people by having municipalities that can handle these issues, but these are steps that will be taken cautiously and evaluated.” Four municipalities—Shkodra, Berat, Kolonjë, and Divjakë—with different sizes and geographical distribution, as well as complicated issues in the areas of agriculture, health, and education, are participating in the pilot project,” said Arbjan Mazniku, Minister of State for Local Government.

The agreements reached today in the areas of agriculture, health, and education represent another step forward in the reform of decentralization of powers to local government.