Today, Prime Minister Edi Rama called on inhabitants of the Outer Ring Road area to stop their protests, to withdraw from their unjust demands for full compensation, and to open the way for development. PM Rama used an accusatory language today during a meeting of the Co-Governance Platform:
People who have just build without permits in these years, and have accumulated wealth without permits, today threaten and demand 100% compensation from citizens’ taxes.
They want to take money from this budget in order to compensate professional invaders, who have 5 to 8 villas and businesses build in years during the great hullabaloo?! This is unacceptable and in can in no way be swallowed and digested.
So, those people there would better leave the street they have blocked and open the way for development.
However, in a meeting with Astir area inhabitants during the electoral campaign in 2017, PM Rama had told them their houses would not be demolished. Full of compassion, he had stated that they were investments made with hard-won money:
This issue is the same for many others. We are engaged to have a serious process, to bring this story to an end because this is not a matter of legalization in the sense that houses wouldn’t be demolished. Because houses will not be demolished anyhow. The issue is that those [houses] are dead capital. They are investments made with blood savings.
