The Ministry of Interior, through the Police, the National Inspectorate of Territory Protection and the Fire Service, is implementing the National Plan “SAFE STAY IN ALBANIA” in order to better manage the tourist season. The Minister of Interior, Taulant Balla, stated that the vision “Albania 2030” is based on the irreversibility of the progress achieved in the field of tourism, in order to make Albania the champion of the Balkans with the highest level of safety.
Speaking at the “Safe Roads, Safe Tourism” event, which was attended by Deputy Prime Minister Belinda Balluku, Environment Minister Kumbaro, as well as heads of institutions and law enforcement agencies, Balla said that since February, a joint operation of the National Inspectorate for the Protection of the Territory and the State Police has been launched to remove the accumulation of motor vehicles from the sides of national roads.
The minister also confirmed that the state police will deploy more than 1,600 police officers, most of them from the traffic police, to the tourist areas and beaches.
Despite the decrease in the number of road accidents, Balla called for the observance of traffic rules in order to prevent deaths on the roads. He said that high-tech equipment such as cameras, radars and drones were being used to monitor the roads. He mentioned one of the most important projects being worked on to improve road safety, known as the “Smart City”, which will be implemented in large cities, or the use of artificial intelligence.
Among other measures to facilitate movement on both sides of the border, the Minister mentioned the agreement with Kosovo.
Meanwhile, new for this season and next is the “Technical Intervention Corps”, which will ensure interaction and coordination between the Emergency Medical Services, the Fire Brigade and the State Police in the event of major incidents.
Following is the full speech of Minister Balla:
We have already entered the intensive phase of the summer tourist season, we have an increase in the number of arrivals and departures, in addition to the arrivals at the “Mother Teresa” airport or at the border crossings, it is our road axes that testify to a large presence of foreign visitors, mainly arriving by car at the border crossings.
As Minister Kumbaro said, we expect an increase compared to the historic year 2023, with 30-40% of foreign visitors who will enter and/or have chosen Albania to spend their holidays. The Ministry of the Interior, through the State Police, through the National Inspectorate of Territory Protection, through the Fire Protection, connected with this service in all municipalities of the country, has started the implementation of the National Plan that we have called “Safe Stay in Albania”. All this in order to guarantee a safe season for every holidaymaker, whether local or foreign, to reaffirm this year our certification as a tourist destination with impressive security, and to reaffirm and bring attention to our vision Albania 2030. A vision that is based on the irreversibility of the progress achieved in all areas, but with a special focus on Albania, the champion of the Balkans in tourism, certainly at the highest level.
The geographical position of Albania has made our roads not only national roads, but almost all our road corridors are European corridors, from north to south, from west to east of the country, and this is another additional challenge in terms of increasing flows of use of Albanian roads. Since the month of February, we have been carrying out a joint operation between the State Police and the National Institute for Territory Protection to remove the accumulations of motor vehicles on the roadsides, which were not only a violation of the law, a law that has been in force since September 2012, and offered not only an unpleasant sight for visitors but also for locals, but in many cases they were also the source of road accidents with all kinds of degraded vehicles that continued to degrade on the roadsides or on the side of the road. The most typical example was a case on the Elbasan Qafë Thane road, where an old Chinese car had been sitting on the side of the road for decades, even before the system change, and no one had bothered to ask whom it belonged to and why it wasn’t moving. And that Chinese car was often the cause of traffic accidents on the side of the road. I think, Mr. Director, that there could be something like this again, or rather the heads of the National Institute for the Protection of the Territory, which must be cleared up immediately, and here I find the opportunity to thank the Albanian Road Service for its availability within the framework of this cooperation.
During this operation, a significant number of interventions were carried out on a national scale and 600 collection points for tools and parts were identified and their owners were obliged by law to voluntarily relocate them within a reasonable period of time, and then we intervened according to the law, with measures related to either administrative measures or seizures or closure of these activities. In the big plan of measures taken by the State Police, 1,635 police officers, most of them part of the National Public Security Force, are expected to be involved in this national operation, I would call it “Safe Stay in Albania”, which was created as a force precisely to cope with the needs that the tourist season has, but within this an important item is the number of traffic police officers who will work in cooperation with other public bodies to ensure that more road safety on the roads during this season. I believe that we all agree and there is a national consensus that the quality of the roads in Albania has undergone a very big qualitative change during the last years and the data coming from the General Directorate of the Road Transport Service in terms of statistics, prove this improvement of the road quality, because it is directly related to the reduction of road accidents.
In 2023, the number of road accidents has decreased by 44% compared to 2013, while the number of injured citizens has also decreased by 43%. And let’s never forget that in these 10 years we have almost doubled the number of motor vehicles used by Albanian citizens, without forgetting here that the number of motor vehicles with foreign license plates that have entered Albania has increased many times over, so if you want, if we take all the roads together, it turns out that on the 3600 km of national roads managed by the Albanian Roads Authority, 3.6 million vehicles will have passed in the year 2023. If we were to put all these lives one after the other, there would be no room, but this is one part, the other part is that in 2024 we expect 4.5 million vehicles on Albanian national roads. Therefore, in order to monitor the road axes, we have taken measures to use the highest technology equipment to identify offenders, which is related to radars, cameras, drones.
We will also use drones to monitor traffic in hot spots, to have detailed information 24 hours a day, for everyone and to notify the public in cases of need to avoid certain hot spots with a traffic added.
Personally, as Minister of the Interior, I have received many complaints from the public over the past few months about fines imposed by the traffic police, but I can confirm today that in all the cases that have been checked, there has been a violation of road traffic regulations. Those who say that we get fines for nothing, and here I read you a message from a citizen who says Mr. Minister, I have a complaint, see that I was not very fast, I was at most 100 km/h. When we checked the complaint, as we check every citizen’s complaint on behalf of the Prime Minister, we found that the citizen who said he was doing 100 was doing 140 on a road with a speed limit of 90. That is 50 km more than the sign posted by the Albanian Roads Authority.
In addition, I would like to say to everyone that today there is no traffic fine that is not documented with photos and videos. And I’m telling you this because I think there has to be a great awareness on the part of drivers, so that you don’t have the chance to think that they don’t see you, that they don’t follow you with radar, that they don’t photograph you, even if you want to take a video of it to have as a souvenir.
We are not ready, I would have liked to be ready with the “Smart City” project, implemented, but I am very proud that thanks to the support of the Prime Minister and thanks to the support and generosity of the EBA government, in all the main cities of Albania, including tourist areas, we will have it ready, I hope next year. The part related to public safety, protection of life and private property and traffic monitoring, in all the main cities of the country and in all tourist areas through a comprehensive system of technological choices, artificial intelligence, which will enable us to move to another level of public safety.
In addition, when we talk about artificial intelligence, I will give just one example. Artificial intelligence has now replaced, in the countries where we are gaining experience, the people who used to do the work of bay-watching, that is, monitoring the coast with cameras, by watchers in Albanian, because we want to have a single language on the panel, we want to find intelligent solutions in part of these smart city projects, Madam Minister of Tourism.
Coming back to what has brought us together today, which is road safety, I would like to inform the public that we have also addressed one of the concerns that often arise, which is related to the long queues at border crossings. The implementation of the bilateral protocol for the facilitation of entry and exit procedures at the common border crossing point, Morin, Kukës, has begun, and also, I believe by next week, together with the Swedish Minister, we will also announce the facilitation of crossing at the other border crossing points with Kosovo, to allow, let’s say, free crossing for all tourists, whether citizens of Kosovo or Albanians, who want to go to Kosovo.
In addition, as we announced, we now have six additional state police stations ready and working in areas with increased tourist flow: Thesh, Valbona, Tale, Gjirin e Lalzi, Palasa and Ksamil. A 24-hour police service has also been set up at the Koman quay to monitor and improve the safety parameters for the operation of vessels on Lake Koman.
Our innovation this year, in addition to the National Security Force, is the part that connects three public services through the Technical Intervention Corps: the State Police, the Fire and Rescue Service and the National Emergency. All three are closely interlinked, and the sooner this service arrives at a traffic incident, the better the chances of providing first aid at the right time, and unblocking and clearing traffic in the event of a traffic incident.
All these services know very well that this is a very important tourist season, not only to consolidate the international certification we received last year, but also to take it to another level, without forgetting the message we always want to give, that tourists are objects of special importance, in the sense of the guarantee that Albania gives to every foreign tourist.
The news made the rounds, not only in Albania but in the world, when two tourists had their bags stolen from their car, but the good news was that the National Police not only found the thief within 24 hours, but within the same time the citizens returned everything to the stranger, the bag, the wallet and the amount of money they had. To tell you the truth, this is something that only happens in Albania. However, we must preserve and consolidate this as an essential element. Of course, Albania is also competing with other dimensions. Our responsibility is related to security, but one of our important dimensions is becoming day by day, the visible improvement of the roads, as well as the elements related to Albanian generosity, hospitality and, of course, never forgetting the landscape and natural beauties of Albania.