Kosovo's 208th thousand bicycles

Antonio Ricci was an unemployed man in Italy after World War II. Like many others, he desperately sought a job. When he finds it all by chance, his employer asks him to make a huge sacrifice for his budget - to buy a bicycle. He buys it. However, immediately his bicycle is stolen from him, and his job - keeping opportunity is lost. So he starts trying to find a thief and a bicycle, but in the end he learns that thieves are not just the only thieves who committed the act of stealing, but the entire morally malpractice of poverty. All the way to the end, since Antônio fails to pick up his bicycle under fire from the well, he tries to steal a bike. So he becomes a thief himself.

According to the Insurance Bureau (BKS) during the past year in Kosovo, there were 208 thousand unregistered squirrels. The government is reading this situation with an ordinary bureaucratic coolness as seen by the contract signed for sticky tickets. On the other hand, the opposition is reading it with as common adhesion that simplifies it to absurdity, remembering extreme poverty and citing a government robbery from five euros a year to those tickets. However, someone is reading the situation exactly right: wanting microfinancial institutions.

“get credit for recording” It's the offer of these institutions that want to drag me to profit (the annual interest is 10 percent) in a large market of 200 thousand people. If 200 thousand citizens receive loans from 300 euros on average (the credit offered is 200 to 500) then these microfinance institutions would generate 6m euros annually in interest of this loan. In case of 100 grand, then the profit would be 3 million. In case of 50 grand, then the profit would be 1.5 million. Simply put, these institutions will earn millions from the citizens' pocket only out of the interest of this loan, which is why citizens don't have the money to register the squirrels when the deadline expires. And these profits seem guaranteed after signing the contract for sticky tickets that are in force from September 1st. As James Baldwin says, it costs too much to be poor.

Kick the shit out of poverty.

208 thousand squirrels without recording would have to simplify their collective imagination of poverty. They would even have to unscramble that imagination to give place to the faculty of reason in which the reality given would suffice to simply process. What is that reality? Poverty is not a one-dimensional economic situation. A Kosovo could be poor in February 2018, not poor in November 2019, and still poor in June 2020 because it could be out of work in February 2018, with work in November 2019 and again out of work in June 2020. Such poverty is not to be understood simply by lack of basics. Such is extreme poverty - which unfortunately continues to afflict much of its citizens. In the case of 208 thousand people without record, however, extreme poverty is not participating, since extremely poor citizens have no place. So, we're talking about another poverty, a poverty with a more stable character, a poverty that's hidden and that hits people with over-sized incomes at certain times.

So banks that are offering an additional financial tighten are realizing that these Kosovars are linked to the bonds of other financial constraints that make it impossible to keep them at the time of the year when the registration deadlines come up to have in their wallets hundreds of euros for registration. They are also understanding how much fragility is a large part of the family economies in Kosovo, which may suffer from the aforementioned episode poverty. A portion of citizens depend on the remittances made by family members to the diaspora, which may be neither predictable nor sustainable but entirely dependent on the roots of these family members. Another part is the victim of a highly insecure job market. Some work at temporary work. Part of them are completely out of work. Another part have spent much on the treatment of a family member. And so on. The summer of all of this is the inability of revenue planning and the full economic perspective, which may not necessarily be called poverty.

The film “The Bicikllian” may also have seen Hysen Durmish signing the contract for sticky tickets. He too may have felt compassion for the rest of Antonio's bicycle and no job. I can't believe anyone in Kosovo believes that expensive squirrels are not registered. Or that registration is not about whim or lazy. Let's not forget that every time these people get on the street, they are exposed to danger of severe police sentences. And I can't believe that someone seriously views the car as a luxury. That would be the same logic as that of Isa Mustaf since 2015 as prime minister when many young people from Kosovo were leaving he accused them of having “aflona”.

There's no rocket science here. The non-registering of 208 thousand squirrels has to do with economic uncertainty, financial constraints and the lack of prospects that make family budget planning impossible. Why does Hysen Durmish not wait a few years until the economy improves, inequality decreases, and production grows to place then sticky tickets? After all, they promised. But, it seems that Hyseni and Libron and Albin are understanding literally the “merging poverty”. This phrase implies to kick off poverty since it fired Tome Gashi the charity of a poor man in downtown Pristina. It actually means getting people out of this great economic uncertainty.