On May 9, Tirana Mayor Erion Veliaj announced that the municipality has started work on two projects that will provide drinking water 24 hours a day for most residents of Tirana.
Inspecting the water filtration plant in Paskuqan, Veliaj said:
“We are on the verge of opening two major city projects: the new pipeline that doubles the inflow to Bovilla, where water is filtered and the filtration plant.
Many thanks to the Prime Minister and Minister Balluku, who became our partners to share this cost; so we would do the filtration plant where we are, they would make the pipeline that doubles the water in Tirana. ”
Veliaj said that ‘the vast majority of citizens will see the promise for 24 hours of water fulfilled now, not in 2024.”
In 2017, when Mayor Veliaj approved the increase in the price of drinking water, he promised that Tirana would have water 24 hours a day:
“We want Tirana to have water 24 hours a day within 5 years. We took Tirana with 7 hours of water a day, we have it with 14 hours and we want, as we promised, from January 1 when we started these major investments after the EBRD entrusted us with the water loan, until the end of the next term we have gone from 14 to 24 hours of water and to feel proud that we were part of a vital transformation for Tirana.”
Although the mayor says that now in the capital there are 14 hours of water per day, citizens say that they have water mainly 7 hours a day, according to the schedule: 6: 00-8: 00, 12: 00-13: 30, and 19: 00- 20:30. Some have reported even less.
In the summer of 2019, many major neighbourhoods of Tirana such as ‘Ali Demi’, ‘Myslym Shyri’, ‘Paris Commune’, and parts of Blloku were supplied with water only 2 hours a day. In an Exit News report, citizens claimed that in the last 2-3 years the water supply situation has deteriorated.
