‘Live Green’ in the small Paris – The MJAFT Movement

Propaganda does not educate

By Kristi Pinderi

Korça, 20 May 2006

Korça today is facing environmental problems, which are as serious as the problems of every other city in Albania . The MJAFT activists noticed this fact on Saturday, when they organized a debate with the representatives of the local authorities of this city, in the framework of the “Live Green” campaign.

Erion Veliaj, present in this debate, said, “It is very easy to make the difference between the languages and the dialects of every city, as it is very easy to make the natural differences between each of them. But in the end, you see that we all have something in common: we live in the most polluted country of Europe ”.

In the “Small Paris” of Albania there are today less than 200 thousand squared meter of green surface, whilst over 8 thousand squared meter of green surface, has become a new quarter, with new buildings.

Even though there is a considerable forestall surface, Korça, a very cold city in winter, is on the other side one of the main users of wood. The forests are used by the private businesses, which never during these years have planted at least one new tree, in order to compensate the losses.

It is not hard to notice the low quality of investments in environmental problems these years, as it is not hard to notice maybe the biggest problem of this city today: the lack of civic responsibility to protect the environment.

Despite the dark side of the coin, Korça is however a city that has profited by full investments such as 24 hours a day running water. Soon, a project to process the wastes will be inaugurated.

The question is: do the citizens of Korça have the necessary civic culture to maintain these investments?

It is hard to say “yes”. Korça, like every other Albanian city, has experienced lately the uncontrolled demographic movements. A part of the citizens have gone to live in Tirana or abroad, while many inhabitants of the rural areas have populated the city. The Korça pavements are ruined, and what is worse, they are not clean any more. In the Viktor Eftimiu street, the so-called citizens uprooted the trees in a barbarian way.

Mihallaq Qirja, representative of the association “Development and Protection of the Ecosystem”, said during the debate organized by the MJAFT Movement, that the propaganda is not enough to educate the citizens.

A little earlier, some foreign organizations financed a project in the city of Korça . The work started to create a park in one of the neighborhoods. First, the community stayed indifferent to this project. Then they noticed something they found strange: the project was serious and they were doing a good job. One of the inhabitants of the neighborhood knocked on the door of the project and asked to be involved in it, saying: “I want to pay for this, so that I can feel comfortable when sitting in the new benches of the park”.

This case has only one sincere message: the good work and not propaganda, educates the people.