“There was no consultation before the Territorial reform was drafted” — Dimal’s mayor clashes with Mazniku, the MP: Dimal provides 14 of the 26 services

A day before the vote in Parliament on the new Territorial Map, Arbjan Mazniku explained once again how this reform will work.

A guest on “Breaking” on Top News, the Socialist MP clashed with the mayor of Dimal, Juliana Memaj.

Memaj said she is against this reform and added that the municipality of Dimal covers 21 budget programmes.

The debate:

Mazniku: Today the municipality of Dimal, which functions well financially, provides 14 of the 26 budget services it is supposed to cover.

Memaj: There has been no transparency in this evidence produced by the experts for the concrete case of the functions. There was no consultation before the draft law was drawn up. I don’t know, what Mazniku says may be correct, but I can say from the figures I have that our municipality comes out at 21 budget programmes. We speak in budget programmes, which include within their elements all the functions.

Mazniku: The municipality of Dimal, measured with the same yardstick as the country’s 61 municipalities, with the Finance Ministry’s budget programmes, not with data I have made up myself. It is the same yardstick for all of Albania. Each of us has his own yardstick for measuring things. The municipality in question, from the standpoint of municipal functionality, has not functioned badly. But from other standpoints, to do with demography or economic performance, it has shown not-so-good elements. The general element is that it would benefit massively from cooperation. It is close to an area with a very large city. The interaction with Berat is historic. They have a shared economy. A large part of the people who go to receive services receive them in Berat. They sell and buy in Berat…

Memaj: You did not give accurate data. The index for the economic data of the municipality of Dimal is higher than in the municipality of Berat. We have been among those municipalities that have invested from our own revenues.