Berisha from Korça: Prices in Albania have risen at rates far higher than wages! We will overturn this situation

The chairman of the Democratic Party, Sali Berisha, speaking from the ‘Revival’ rostrum in the city of Korça, raised concern over the sharp rise in consumer prices in the country, stressing that from 2013 to today they have risen incomparably more than the level of wages.

During the meeting with supporters, Berisha compared purchasing power and prices with European Union countries, taking as an example his recent experience while taking part in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.

“I was in Strasbourg, I was at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, I went out of curiosity into a supermarket, absolutely all the prices were either equal to or twice as low as here. But French wages are at least five times higher than ours. What does that mean? It means we have come to a very difficult time, a time in which we are not as in 1990, when our shops were empty but we had our wages in our pockets, such as they were. Today our pockets are empty, the shops are full, but we cannot buy,” Berisha said.

According to the DP chairman, this situation of poverty has only one main cause, directly linked to the management of public finances:

“This is poverty, which has only one cause: the unrestrained theft of the taxes and public assets of Korça and all of Albania,” he stressed.

Continuing his speech, Berisha underlined that in today’s social environment a loss of empathy and sensitivity toward citizens’ pain, suffering and economic hardship is being noticed, which according to him is destructive for the country.

Referring to official statements about living standards, Berisha criticised the distance between the government and the economic reality of the most sensitive part of society.

“‘No one suffers for bread,’ he says. Of course, because for himself he opens a 36,000-euro bottle, and to open a 36,000-euro bottle at a time when almost all pensioners cannot buy the month’s food, then naturally you feel nothing for them. Then poverty looks to you like the other’s inability and you wash your hands of it, I have no responsibility. Then injustice looks like a normal thing. Then weakness looks like his fault,” Berisha said.

Berisha listed a series of social and economic promises, including doubling wages and pensions, establishing a living minimum and reimbursing all medicines.

“Wages will be doubled, pensions will be doubled, the living minimum will be given, all medicines will be reimbursed. And I guarantee you that if the DP has undertaken revival as its main motto, it has only one single aim, to renew Albania in every aspect. To return to Albanians the assets they have,” he said.

Closing his message from Korça, the opposition leader pledged that the Democratic Party will work to change this economic and social situation in the country as a matter of urgency.

“We will overturn this situation in the most urgent way,” Berisha said.