Erion Veliaj has chosen to make a funny reaction, after the arrest of his directors, who had set up a company to receive the tenders, declaring that he dismissed them from their duties and that they should face justice, but does not take any responsibility, that the municipality he leads has become a hotbed of corruption.
Veliaj says that the Municipality, which he refers to as an “organization”, has done a lot of work in Tirana, but does not explain why it allowed the theft of citizens’ taxes through the company “5D Konstruksion”, even though it was informed by the opposition, the media and disqualified companies, what happened to the tenders.
Here is Veliaj’s reaction:
“As I believe you know, I have had a challenging week with my personal health, but as you have seen from the news, I have also had a challenge with the health of the organization I lead.
But like any organization, just like the human organism, it has its challenges. The question is: How do we address these challenges? Today I started the day with a meeting, where we made the decision to remove some colleagues because the big organization is more important than 1 or 2 people, who may have problems with the law and should solve these problems with justice. I wish they would prove their innocence, but while they resolve those issues, we need the organization to move forward. In an organization, – it doesn’t matter if it’s a school, if it’s a municipality, if it’s a director or a big company, – if there’s a problem, it must be addressed.
I think that people should solve problems with justice without slowing down the pace of the organization. This is the reason why some people have to take a ‘time out’, and why the organization itself, in this case the Municipality of Tirana, has to set up some self-correcting systems. We have an internal audit system, but I believe that we should also put in place a system to control the conflict of interest. There are many organizations that for someone who has worked there and then leaves, they decide that that person will no longer have anything to do with that organization for a certain period of 3 years, 5 or 10. I am seriously considering implementing this also in the Municipality of Tirana.
This organization has done extraordinary work, it has changed the face of Tirana, but it is not perfect, it makes its own mistakes. Sometimes, you have to give people time to sort out the issues with fairness, while you have to give the organization the freedom to keep moving forward. This is a country that does not easily forgive success. There are some people who forget every work that has been done and for a problem, for an issue that must be solved and addressed, they are ready to cancel everything,” said Veliaj.
