TIRANA, 7 – The Chairman of the Freedom Party (FP), Ilir Meta, described the aid package approved by the government at the end of last year as an electoral pill.
Meta said in a media conference on Friday that the aid has no real impact on mitigating the crisis of prices and cost of living.
“The government decided to allocate 8 billion lek or less than 80 million dollars to pensioners and families in need, although as a result of high inflation, in 11 months it collected 520 million USD. While Rama trumpets the “Big Package” with 80 million euros, according to the KLSH report, the misuse and robbery of Albanians’ taxes exceeds 1 billion euros, only for the period January-November 2022,” said FP head. Also, Meta added that in 2013 the public debt was 62.4%, while today it is 107%.
“If North Macedonia repays its debt with 1 year of exports, 13 years of exports are needed in Albania”, said Meta.
The Chairman of the Freedom Party raised as a concern the increase in the number of employees in public administration on the eve of the electoral campaign.
“The latest data from INSTAT, the government institute of statistics, give an alarming figure of the inflation of the state administration as it has increased by 22,0000 people since 2014. Only in 2021, at the time of the election campaign, the administration increased by about 8,0000 people. For partisan and lawless dismissals, the Albanian state has been forced to pay more than 108 million euros in the last 8 years to settle the court bills for unfair dismissals of 15,000 employees. When he came to power, Edi Rama promised an efficient public administration with a smaller number of employees. But the facts show the complete opposite. After the reform in the local government in 2015, instead of the number of employees decreasing, as was widely trumpeted, on the contrary, the local administration doubled and went up from 19,600 employees to 35,000 employees, costing the State Budget about an additional amount of 100 million euros ,” said Meta. /argumentum.al
