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The officials working in the Himarë/Himara Municipality are aware of such discrepancy
between the number of residents and “actual” inhabitants and as one of the officials noted
they are tying to improve the situation which is becoming an important issue for them:
There are two main reasons that I found out. The first one is that some people like
Aspasia, for example, hm […] sister of Aghatula, you know her […] she has her
papers in Tirana. Before 1990 it was something special to live in Tirana. It was very
difficult to get the papers to move to Tirana. People living there were considered like
people living in the castle. Like the higher rank of the society. So they have this
nostalgia, probably […]. Because she had everything in Tirana. Because of the
nostalgia of being somebody important, of being somebody living in Tirana, in the big
city rather than in the village like Dhermi, they are living their papers there. The
second reason is that I am trying to get the papers of my uncle […]. Foto. My uncle
who died. Now his wife and kid asked me to arrange this and for approximately three
or four months I am trying to bring the papers here from the municipality in Vlorë.
And it is as if nobody worked in Vlorë. I went there twice and until now nothing has
changed. So this is another thing why people do not bring their papers to Himara
municipality. First thing is hmm […] how you say […] the mentality or the nostalgia
of living in big cities at that time and the second is the birocracy. There are other
reasons as well but I noticed these two main reasons […].
I asked him if he thought that he could improve the situation. The official answered:
I will tell you […]. Before, in order to get your papers in Himara, you had to pay 1000
Lek 44 to the government and 3000 Lek to the Bashkia (municipality). Now you have to
pay half because you still have to pay to the government. So in this way we help
people to bring their papers to Himara. But still it is not right. Before we were cca.
10.000 and now we are 11.322. There is cca. 1.000 more people in two years. 10%,
this is not bad! And most of these people that used to live in Dhermi (during
communism) live nowadays in Greece. They are not interested in Dhermi. While those
who used to live in other areas and now live in Dhermi are much, much more
interested, like my father Andrea, Spiros, Jorghos […] most of the people […]. Most
of the people who lived in Dhermi until 1990 are less interested in Dhermi than those
who lived outside the village. Those people who used to live here do not care. They
are not interested. They do not live and vote in Dhermi.
I asked: But how you are going to deal with them as they are still somehow important for you,
at least in the times of elections?
I think it has to do with the mentality and their education. Because most of them used
to work on the farm (in cooperative). They are not aware of anything. As they cannot
think that they can change things they have expectations only from themselves.
In the words of the official the Himarë/Himara municipality is trying to reduce the
discrepancy between the numbers of those registered and those that actually inhabit the place
by lessening the costs of registration from the side of municipality. The situation, however,
improved only slightly. One of the reasons is a long process of registration at the Municipality
of Vlorë. Another reason lies in the people themselves. The official assumes two motives for
the people’s indifference. One of them might be nostalgia or yearning for the times of
44 1000 Lek is 8.19 Euro according to the exchange rate from August 11, 2007.
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