MASTER'S THESIS - SuSanA

APPENDIX C – Site visits
4 Site visit 4: Commune Hajmel
Date: 24.01.2012
Commune:
Mayor of commune:
Hajmel (consists of five villages with 6,075 inhabitants in total)
Leke Bibaj
Mobil: 0672637022
Phone: 026560008
kommunahajmel@gmail.com
Villages:
Hajmel and Nënshat
Commune was visited with Dritan Pistoli, the Social Inspector of ADF, who explained the situation in the
commune and translated the interview. The commune consists of five villages with 6,075 inhabitants in
total and has four water supply systems. The village Nënshat is part of an old ADF project for drinking water
supply, financed by German KfW. The system was finished in 2006 and works by gravity and is therefore
easy to handle. The other three water supply systems of the commune work with pumps.
The commune is covered by an utility, but it was stated by Dritan Pistoli that the service of the utility is not
that well. After finishing the water supply project in Nënshat, the project was handed over to the commune
that wants to run the service for that village themselves. According to the mayor of the commune, Leke
Bibaj, the commune can take care of the people’s welfare better that the utility, as the chief of the utility is
not very linked to the area and can change every few years.
One of the problems of the water utility is that they employ too many workers and therefore the service is
very expensive. A reform of the structure is recommended. For three villages of 600 families in total, the
utility employs nine workers, what means one worker for 70 families. The service of Nënshat is under the
commune that employs two workers (one full-time, one part-time) for 400 families with around 2,100
people. This shows that the commune works more effective and cost saving than the utility and should be
supported.
The problem is that the commune has no license and runs the service illegally without tariffs approved by
the WRA. According to Dritan Pistoli, the two solutions for this problem would be to join the existing
shareholder company (utility) or to create an own shareholder company in order to get the necessary
license. The main purpose of visiting the commune was to talk with the mayor of communes about the two
options and the future strategy. Additionally, there was the chance to talk with the mayor of communes
about the sanitary situation in the commune and the general attitude of people towards that topic.
In general, what could be seen in the commune without visiting all villages, streets and houses seemed to
be in a good quality. Next to the LGU building two schools were observed (a primary and a highschool).
The interview with the mayor of the commune, Leke Bibaj, was facilitated by Dritan Pistoli from ADF, who
translated from Albanian into English. As only the main content was translated, many details got lost.
Sometimes Dritan Pistoli had to discuss even a long time with Leke Bibaj to clarify the given information. It
seemed that expressions were not used in a clear way and that many misunderstandings occurred. Missing
knowledge about technology was another problem. As an example, the mayor insisted on the term “septic
tank”, even he explained that the villagers have only pits that are lined with bricks what is not a septic tank.
Additionally, it was hard to get the requested information, as the mayor talked about the topic in the way he
wanted, what was quite unstructured. Questions had to be repeated several times to get an answer that
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