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Foreigners are paid millions, Albanians are paid a pittance/ How was the miners' strike broken and who is keeping the exploitation contract with the Turkish company secret?

2025-12-17 21:55:57Aktualitet SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

 

The documents openly reveal another form of abuse and discrimination. The August 2025 payroll shows that salaries for foreign workers go up to 550 thousand new lek.

"Foreign citizens also work with the same code and the same profession, with the same job in the same galleries and are paid several times more than Albanian miners, that is, with Albanian nationality, and of course this is inexcusable. This story that their employer or a state inspector comes out and says look, this engineer or this miner or this firefighter received 2 million lek per month is of course a banal story. If you do the math, it means that those two million are for 26 days of work. Does anyone in Albania, apart from farmers, work 26 days a month today?" said the SP MP, Erion Braçe.

The payroll shows that 26 working days are worked per month, which constitutes a violation of the Labor Code, while the miners themselves state that in order to increase their income they work two underground shifts. This is also the case of Albert Bushprendi, who was the first to be fired, leading to a chain effect leading to a strike and mass layoffs.

"Working like a slave, giving him as much income as you want in copper, gold, and everything, he doesn't care," said the sodist Tonin Përkeqi.

"There are workers who work in the mine and are paid 28 thousand old lek," said Dritan Lleshi, President of the Union.

"I work double the time, that's not my salary, it's excessive work," said miner Albert Bushpendi.

"With this salary that we have, 41 thousand old lek, I get, I am the third in the house, with a house on credit," said firefighter Marjo Simoni.

"Using them beyond the 8 o'clock schedule underground, in a terribly difficult job with a physical and mental impact, which is directly related to the health of the worker who is there and which can have very serious consequences for his colleagues but also for the mine itself, is criminal and barbaric exploitation of these workers," said SP MP Erion Braçe.

Miners report that they work in difficult working conditions, with high risks from rockfalls, gases, and explosions.

"We are in the smoke of the mines, we are in the smoke of the heavy machinery that works there, as the fumes from the gases become unbearable, we are in water, in mud," said firefighter Lekë Gjergji.

"This danger has to do with explosives, we use explosives and stones, the country is unarmed, there are many places without weapons, but they don't want to know, they just ask if there was an explosion, no, why don't you do it, demand an account, are you going to stay at work or should we do the explosion, and there are cases where stones have fallen, they have fallen on me several times," said firefighter Marjo Simoni.

How was the miners' strike broken and who is keeping the exploitation contract with the Turkish company secret?!

Underground work, due to the difficulty and risks it carries, requires specific treatments not only for working conditions, but also for health care, the continuous checks that miners must perform. But the company "Tete Albania", which uses the gallery, does not provide any medical checks to its employees.

"We want medical checkups, we work underground. The labor code states that underground workers will go to the company twice a year to have their lungs checked, we work in smoke," said miner Albert Bushprendi.

"We do the health checks ourselves with our own money. To go into a mine 2 km underground for what? So that someone can get rich with our sweat and effort," said Lekë Gjergji, a firefighter.

Of the 76 miners who started the strike, 61 continued. The rest returned to work by signing a contract with conditions much more detrimental to them than before.

"They are very experienced people who are on strike today, they are an asset not only for that mine, but they are a national asset. In the conditions in which Albania is, that is, there is a screaming need for workers, treating workers and experienced workers like this is terrible. Those miners should not be allowed to be broken. Why? Because they are within their constitutional legal right," said the SP MP, Erion Braçe.

“Inside Story” spoke with protesters in late November, during the days when the strike was at its peak. In the following days, the strike began to wane, although it did not completely die down.

This strike brought to the surface not only the inhumane treatment of employees, but also the extortion of Albanian property.

What stands out from the beginning of the story is the fact that the exploitation contract between the state and the Turkish company "Tete Albania" is kept secret. We have addressed the relevant institutions, but the contract that should have been public is nowhere to be found. Under these conditions, the company's obligations to the Albanian state or the investments that need to be made remain unknown. The financial statements are hidden and in previous periods it has consistently declared losses. But what keeps the Turkish company in Albania, when the activity is consistently loss-making?

"The question I have is: has any analysis ever been done, especially by AKBN, on the investment and development of these natural resource deposits that we have contracted? No," said SP MP Erion Braçe.

"So, you can't treat a mine in the 21st century as if it were operating in the 19th century. How does a 19th century mine differ from a 21st century one? From investments, you make the additional investments, the ones needed to raise the standard. This is the biggest problem we have," said economic expert Pano Soko./ Inside Story

 


Në përputhje me standarded JTI

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