Minister Balluku’s speech at the “Safe roads, safe tourism” conference:

Hello everyone,

To be honest, I’ve asked my colleagues, Mr Balla and Mrs Kumbaro, to hold a meeting today, because we can’t even say that we’re on the verge of the season, because the season has started like never before this year, it started early, but of course we expect that in the coming days we will have an intensification of tourists who will come to our country and Albanians who will return to meet their family members during this period. For this reason, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy has been preparing for a long time to hand over some of the most important axes, to rehabilitate some of the other axes, to maintain a good part of the national axes from north to south, and all this is an important package that is not only managed by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy, but the help of colleagues is definitely needed. That is why we are all here today.

I would also like to inform the public that as of today we are also launching a road safety awareness campaign, which is essential for us today to deliver axles that will have all the road safety parameters, but also all the technical parameters, as the European Union has.

So, for the first time in the Republic of Albania, we will have a motorway, the Thumane-Kashari motorway, with a speed of 130 kilometres per hour. The Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy, but also the Ministry of the Interior and, of course, the State Police, will be faced with a new situation that will also require your attention, because these are new roads, they are unknown roads for the drivers of vehicles operating in the Republic of Albania and for all the vehicles that will come to our country.

Thank you Taulant,

Thank you Mirela,

Electronic transport is very important. In terms of technology and customised services for all citizens, whether they are Albanians or foreigners, the General Directorate of Road Transport is one of the most advanced institutions. Therefore, it is very important that e-transport is promoted by the whole body and of course, it is important that the citizens themselves look at it. For us, it must be said that the need for e-transport arose as a request from foreign tourists who come to Albania and need to be informed about how they can get from one destination to another, because, as the Minister of Tourism said, foreign citizens who come and visit Albania do not stop at just one destination. They try the mountain paths, then they go down to the sea; they come to see Tirana and many other destinations. Therefore, the need has arisen to have intercity public transport of a different quality and, of course, modernized.

That is why the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy has started its work and has created all the legal conditions for the establishment of the National Road Transport Service Agency, which will soon be operational. There will be a stabilized network throughout the Republic of Albania with the appropriate stations and, of course, with stations in the main centers of the municipalities that are the district center. Therefore, e-transport is one of the newest and most important modules in terms of information and movement throughout the territory of Albania.

I would also like to emphasize that this year we will have a new look for the border posts. All border crossings, in cooperation between our three ministries, have already completed a good part of them, and another part will be delivered in the coming weeks. We have a defined image for each of them. We will have the opportunity to publish them in the coming days, somewhere Mirela will be, somewhere I will be, somewhere Taulanti will be. A very good job has been done to create a trade entry for the Republic of Albania. So from each entry point there is a color that is dedicated. There will be murals with which the new Ministry, the Ministry of Economy, Culture and Innovation, has been entrusted, which will be part of the package of the whole image change of the border points.

Thumanë-Kashar is very good news for Albanian road transport, but it is also a tangible fact of what the Blue Corridor will be like. Blue Corridor or Corridor VIII, as Taulanti said, now the Republic of Albania is not building roads that connect two cities, two regions, two provinces, but road corridors that connect, interconnect Albania with other countries. They are connecting Albania with Europe, from north to south. And having said that, it should be borne in mind that this will be the case with all the other lots of the Blue Corridor, with the same parameters that Thumanë-Kashar will have, which we have often made visible to the citizens during the construction site, but from 30 June it will be accessible to them.

I would like to emphasise a fact here. Roads have several parameters when they are built. They also have certain parameters with regard to the vehicles that use them. So you should remember that the General Directorate of Roads has a modern device that controls the tonnage of vehicles, especially on new axes such as Thumanë-Kashar or such as the Fier bypass, the Vlora bypass, the Account tunnel. This device will be in permanent operation for all the heavy vehicles which often, I don’t want to say in almost all cases, exceed the tonnage foreseen to describe road x. They will be penalised because today we are building roads of a different quality, but these roads must be maintained and all the technical conditions for their use must be respected.

It should also be said that other important cases will be presented during this season. The Llogara tunnel, which will open a new gateway to the south of Albania, where it will take 7 minutes to describe the Llogara tunnel under maximum safety conditions, compared to the 45 minutes it took until yesterday to pass through the Llogara pass. The latter will continue to be an important tourist road, but of course, only a tourist road and not a road with the right parameters to pass all vehicles, especially the numerous buses that will be directed from Vlora airport to the Southern Riviera next year.

Something else very important that was mentioned by both colleagues is the sensitivity that everyone should have not only the institutions, but also the citizens themselves. Sensitivity with regard to road safety. Road safety must be guaranteed by the state institutions, but on the other hand, a road can meet all the parameters, but if the driver of the vehicle is driving at 120-130 km/h, or even exceeding the speed limits, is writing on the phone, it is impossible for the state police to prevent this type of accident. We had a terrible accident last year, precisely because of the carelessness of a driver who took with him a whole family who were on holiday in Albania. What we are asking for is the attention of the entire public in terms of road safety. The measures will be strict. The traffic police will take over all the new motorways, as well as the ones that are already in use, and the patrols during the season will be much more intense than usual. In addition, I agree with Taulanti, of course, by order of the Prime Minister, we check all the complaints that come to us, but most of them, the vast majority of them, turn out to be unfounded and violations of the traffic code are commonplace. They are commonplace, and what is even more curious is that they are not only committed by young or inexperienced drivers, but by drivers of all ages, and even by drivers who have been driving for a long time. So the responsibility, undoubtedly a large part of it lies with the state institutions, but the responsibility is the personal responsibility of each driver, so we will monitor and punish all those who violate the rules of the Highway Code, which is now a revised code, a code that is almost similar to that of the European Union, without any changes.

Coordination of forces in terms of the General Directorate of Roads, the Albanian Roads Directorate, the Roads Police and all the other forces that are known for their work in the area. We did a trial run last year; of course, with a much smaller number of visitors, and together with two other colleagues, we had a number of task forces operating in the area. If we passed the fire test successfully, I can assure you that we will be even more committed this year. The Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy, the Ministry of Tourism and the Ministry of the Environment, but coordinated with the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Health and of course the Ministry of Economy, Culture and Innovation will be the 6 main bodies that will manage this season.

It is very important for us to have your understanding because there will be task forces in the territory for this progress. Starting with the task forces that are working today for the protection of the wash waters, the task force for the protection of the territory and of course the sea has a maximum focus during this season, but as the Minister said, the mountainous part is also very important to be monitored by our troops, but to have the sensitivity of the communities themselves who also manage the tourist units there.

As the Minister of the Interior said, we regret that we did not have the opportunity to have the new Smart City package this year, because next year we will have the Traffic Monitoring Centre, which together with the Smart City package is one of the most innovative packages for road safety, but not only for national security. Next year we will be equipped with a monitoring that, unlike this year, will continue to be directly in the field, a monitoring that will be a virtual monitoring with zero errors. The Traffic Monitoring Centre is a centre in which all the institutions that contribute to the management of road traffic will participate and will be located together. We will have the participation of the Road Authority, the General Directorate of Roads, the State Police, the Civil Emergency, the National Emergency, which will monitor the traffic in real time.

We have also undertaken this year to build a radio that will intervene at any time during the journey to inform you of the traffic situation in the event of accidents or other problems that will force you to deviate from the route you have taken in order to reach your destination by a different road solution. The National Traffic Centre will also manage this. On the other hand, as of this season, information boards will be placed at important points, I will give you an example to make it more concrete, so that we do not discuss in the abstract, before reaching the Rrogozhina junction, we will have a board placed there showing how the traffic is flowing, Because we have noticed that recently all the drivers entering Tirana prefer to enter from Elbasan, which is of course because we are already in the process of initiating all the procedures for the construction of the Elbasan bypass, at the moment the national road turns into a funnel in the part where it enters the Elbasan-Tirana motorway, causing long queues of traffic. Although the road through Kavaja and Durrës is often cheaper, the citizens do not choose it. Therefore, in these cases, there will be information boards at certain points to show citizens and drivers which is the best road to take, with less traffic, or where there are no problems. Tirana-Durrësi, for example, is known for its problems with traffic accidents, which are often due to carelessness, because they are accidents caused by using the phone or other distractions.

It must be said that our plans for next year are very important. This year, we will immediately start work on the upgrading of the Tirana-Durres axis, a very important axis that currently carries the bulk of the traffic, but with the construction of other axes, Thumanë-Kashari and then Kashar-Lekaj, a good part of the traffic will leave this motorway to go directly to the Blue Corridor, towards Rrogozhina. However, if you take into account the construction of the Durrës seafront, which has already started, you can see the progress we are making there for the new beach that is being created. On the other hand, the construction of Porto-Romano, the new port in Porto-Romano, where we will probably also have a NATO base; they will demand that the Tirana-Durres axis be an axis with new parameters. Therefore, that on both sides of this axis there will be an extra lane, plus the emergency lane, so that it will be in a higher category of European Union motorway criteria.

I would like to reiterate what Taulanti said about the use of drones. I would like to inform you that only the drones available to the Ministry of the Interior will not be used. We have a full agreement with the Ministry of Defence that the new Bajraktar drones used by the Ministry of Defence will be used throughout the season for civilian and surveillance purposes. We have recently conducted an exercise with Bajraktar drones, specifically with the Albanian Road Authority. We did a simulation and traffic monitoring at the entrance to the city of Saranda. Saranda is one of the cities with the densest and busiest traffic during the summer season, and with a not very good internal traffic solution, because there are six entrances, but each of them is hindered by long queues. Considering that in the near future, next year, we will start the construction of a bypass in Saranda, we used the Bajraktar drones to see exactly how this traffic develops on different days of the week and at different times of the week. I can assure you that the images are as clear as the eye itself. These drones will be available to the institutions that monitor and operate in the area during the summer season, adding to the drones used by the Ministry of the Interior.

We have been coordinating all these tasks for some time. All these tasks are organic tasks of our ministries, but also with the high responsibility and understanding that already all the work that has been done for the promotion of Albania, mainly by Prime Minister Edi Rama, and the work that has been done by the Ministry of Environment and Tourism to promote our country in any case related to tourism, we all have a responsibility, not only an organic duty, but also as Albanians to contribute to this new industry that seems to be very soon to become the most important industry for our country.

I hope we are all aware of the tasks we have to do this season. I hope we do not have any problems and that the coordination and synergy between us is very important. The fact that the heads of the ministries that are here have that synergy and that we are working in an organised way to be successful and to be successful, I am sure that this will also be transmitted to our dependent units and you will also have the same way of working.

Thank you for your attention today. I would like to thank Ilir Mengra and the General Directorate of Roads for giving us the opportunity for this road safety awareness campaign. Please share it through your social networks, including your employees, and we will do our work with the media, because it is important that we all understand that we will continue to build roads with a very high quality. The State Police will do their job properly, but it is important that every citizen feel the responsibility in terms of road safety.

Thank you for today and good work to all of you.