Rama's Urgent Requests

Urban Traffic is extremely bad. Traffic, generally in Pristina, is chaotic”, Zena tells Radio Free Europe.

Kosovo's second round of local elections, which was held on November 14th, led Rama, a professional architect, to win the election race for the Pristina municipality.

Rama defeated Vetevendosje Movement counterCandidate Arben Vitita.

In its plan for leadership of the capital, with over 218,000 residents, there are promises ranging from setting up settlements to increasing green spaces.

Like Zena, issues that need to be addressed more urgently include his fellow citizens.

There must be more around. To multiply public buses, to have more regular lines”, says Sylvia River, a teacher in one of Kosovo's capital schools.

Rama has pledged that the car parking problem will solve “immediately and permanently”.

He has promised to build large parking lots on six key points around Pristina's internal ring and has said their distance will be about 500m from each point of the centre.

Retired professor of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Pristina, Bajrush Bytyci, says he is a bit optimistic about the realisation of the promises given, but things can change if, according to him, he works correctly.

The first “should handle communications. Second, construction must be stopped without permission. Everything must be placed on the track, worked with meritocracy and justice. If it works like this, everything will come to its senses”, Bytyci says.

“Ridefining the city centre” is one of the main projects Rama has released in his programme.

This project envisions that the centre of Pristina will become the entire space within the city's inner ring.

The inner ring envisions the connecting of roads from the Veternik Way to the Industrial Zone to the Panitaire Center.

But for Lulijet, a graduate lawyer, wandering dogs are a problem that needs to be addressed more urgently.

I met at the station where I waited for the bus five or six dogs. I think this is one of the first jobs you'd like to solve. I believe that other jobs are known, infrastructure, very intense communication...”, Lullette says.

According to Blerta, who says he is a new mother, the new chairman should also work on building new state-owned kindergartens for children.

There should be more opportunities for young children to be accepted, no need for intervention. Since there's no state nursery, you're bound to address those private”, Blerta says.

In order for mothers to participate in the job market, the new chairman has pledged to make the gardens of children more accessible.

Rama has also said that in Pristina seven primary and lower middle education school objects are missing, and has promised that they will be built in neighbourhoods: Sofali, Kodra, Stander, Manlem River, Calabria, Trima Hill and New Pristina Center.

There is a need for schools, teachers to be monitored, because learning is a disaster. I don't know what to say that everywhere there is a need for immediate intervention”, says a pensioner who wanted to remain anonymous.

Sali Berisha, who worked in the Pristina municipality a few years ago and is now a pensioner, says Pristina urgently needs to fix parks and sewers.

“Paks, streets and lighting are made. The sewers are fixed for running out of people. I think Rama is the one for that position that has been elected”, says Berisha.

The newly elected chairman has also pledged to complete the network of Family Medicine Centres throughout the territory of the Pristina municipality, making it a family medicine centre available for 10,000 residents.

He also said he'd raise the level of green spaces.

Citizens of Pristina have four years, as long as Rama's mandate should last, to see the promised changes.