Residents of "Shkëlzen" Street in Laknas, Kamza gathered on Monday morning in front of the Kamza municipality in protest.
The lack of drinking water has made their lives difficult, and there is no water sanitation in this area.
"From '94 that I have been a resident of Kamza until today, zero water. We have only come with our own strength, until the limits have come now that there is no more", said Artan Dragjoshi, present at the protest.
According to the residents, so far they have managed to secure their own water supply through wells, but the depletion of groundwater due to the lack of rainfall has left them without water.
"We dug wells ourselves, we spent money. We have run out of wells now, we are at zero. A commission should be set up to see if there is water or not, to verify it," declared Shpetim Tota, a resident of the area.
This community, just 10 kilometers from the center of Tirana, says that this summer it has been forced to pay for water to ensure its supply.
"The wells have also been exhausted, we have started with the world. We buy the world for 100-150 thousand lek.", "Two days, go buy another one. We created it with these conditions in mind." continued Shpêtim Tota.
According to them, even when they opened the wells, they encountered difficulties after being obstructed by the police.
"The other problem is that when we want to dig a well, the police come and don't let us. Then the well is not that it doesn't cost anything, it also costs money, the price goes up to four or five million lek," said Nemir Lushi, another resident of "Shkëlzeni" street in Laknas.
They stated that they want the municipality to start building the sewage system and that they are willing to contribute to this themselves.
"We have shown solidarity with the Laknas pumps, we have said that we can lay the pipe ourselves, just that the municipality gives us the opportunity to have a canal from the street so that we don't have problems with other residents. We should be given this opportunity and we should show solidarity with the pipes ourselves, because we are throwing away all that money and we don't have water," Nemir Lushi further expressed himself.
The residents signed a petition, which they addressed to the municipality, asking it to take concrete measures, otherwise they will return to protest even more in numbers in a week.
"Today we were in front of the Kamëz municipality, where we warned the institutions that if this situation is not resolved in a week, we will be here much longer than we were today," said Edison Lika, activist.
The mayor of Kamëz told the residents through representatives that he could not meet them at that time, but only after noon.
*At 13:00 PM, residents were welcomed by the mayor of Kamëz, Rakip Suli, and expressed their concerns. The mayor stated that the sewerage for the water supply for nearly 1 residents was a considerable cost for the municipality's budget and promised to present it as a proposal in the next budget, also seeking support from the central government.
For this reason, they set a deadline of November of this year to complete the project. To alleviate the residents' water shortage, they tasked the director of water supply and sewage in Kamëz with sending water tankers to homes where drinking water is lacking.
*Note: The article was updated after the meeting that residents had in the Kamëz municipality with Mayor Rakip Suli.
Erisa Kryeziu has completed higher studies in Journalism and Communication and Master of Science in Public Relations at the University of Tirana. She has been a journalist and project manager at Citizens.al for five years, where she reports on social issues and human rights, especially on issues of rights at work, in education, gender equality, marginalized groups, people with disabilities such as and for environmental issues. At the same time, she works as a project coordinator with a focus on youth and media education. User of new reporting techniques such as "Mobile Journalism" and citizen engagement tools in reporting (ECR-Engage Citizens Journalism).
