Since 1999 it has applied for work, the President's touching confession: I don't have the money or the cure.

He waits every day in Prizren's Bashdahanje neighbourhood, and as a manual worker, he wants to find his next job.

According to local authorities, the “trade of the” road exists for decades in this town in southwestern Kosovo.

Earlier, dozens of unemployed people met in the same country, while on weekends regular street work required those who had a job each week but did not earn enough income to support their families.

Social systems have changed, but “street work market” in Prizren has survived. Today, an average of 50 people seek work each day as manual workers.

Most of those with whom we talked on the eve of May 1, International Workers ' Day, do not want to speak publicly on the subject but only briefly comment that living conditions are very bad and that sometimes they cannot afford basic needs for their families.

“Everything is expensive”

The same confirms for Radio Free Europe Sedat Damka, who before the war in Kosovo has worked at the Municipal Water Company. Then he sold cigarettes and socks on the street for a while.

It's getting harder and harder. When I first got here, there was a lot of work, but profit. Now nobody will pay 30 euros a day and everything is expensive”, Damka says, adding that with the money he earns during the day, he can usually buy five liters of food oil.

We work in gardens, we work in construction, we hold wood up to the sixth floor even though my spine hurts, then I can't move, I have problems with my eyes, but I don't have the money to heal myself”, says Damka, who is already in the sixth decade of my life, while all its “colles are younger.

However, all face the same socioeconomic problems.

We go into debt when we buy food at stores because if we don't work for three days, then we don't have to eat. After that, we return the money and so on”, he says.

Damka has applied regularly to the Employment Bureau since 1999, but has not yet found work with regular monthly pay.

“I gave up this”, Damka says, rushing to reach a person who came to the neighborhood looking for manual labor.

Laboring Workers

On the other hand, frustrated are employees in the private sector, some of whom earn more than 500 euros a month. One of them is Elhan Shaban, who says that he would like to have better working conditions and higher incomes.

I'm waiting for my first chance to go to Germany because I can't survive here even though I'm employed. I worked in Italy for a while. I returned thinking it would be better in Kosovo. Gabova”, Shaban says.

He adds that work and life are not ideal even in Western countries, but he points out that there are at least health insurance there.

Cookies, Most Wanted

About 2,800 unemployed people regularly appear at the Municipal Employment Office in Prizren, even though there are 28,000 unemployed people on the list.

Hajrula Hoxha, director of this office, in a proposal for REL, says there is demand for workers, or private companies started constantly searching for workers of different profiles during the coronary pandemic.

“They complain that a large number of employees have left during these two years. They fear the future of their business and are very concerned about it. Unfortunately, we cannot meet everyone's needs because there are no such professions in our” records, Hoxha says.

The biggest demand, Hoxha adds, is for cooks, and according to him, “should import the workforce” if demand is up.

Until a few years ago, there were about 800 academic citizens in our evidence, from doctors to professors. Now the situation is different. There are no doctors, dentists, engineers, and those with unemployed natural science. Most of the unemployed are lawyers, economists, sociologists, professors”, he says on the list of unemployed they don't have any medical technicians because “in Germany has opened the door to”.

Why does the union criticize Kurt's Government?

The independent private sector union, headquartered in Pristina, estimates that the workers' position has deteriorated due to the coronary pandemic. The chairman of this union, Yusuf Azemi, blames the Government of Kosovo, as he says it is not engaged enough.

We really don't have any change for the better. If you ask Government, it says it has done a lot, but we don't feel it. The fact is that we have had nine deaths in the first four months of this year, which is record”, Azemi says, and emphasises that Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti has failed to keep the promises he made during the election campaign.

The current Kosovo government, which has marked first year in power on March 22nd, has said that in September 2020, September 2021, over 25,000 new jobs have been registered “.

But Yusuf Azem insists that these figures are not real. According to him, there is only the possibility that some businesses have given contracts to employees without contracts to take advantage of the Economic Resurrection Package.

The private sector in Kosovo employs about 150,000 citizens, while 100,000 people work in hospitals.

Azem also claims that about 70 per cent of employees do not have permanent working relations and that a large number of Kosovo citizens have left the country in the past 20 years due to poor living conditions.

The fact that about 200,000 of our citizens have applied to leave Kosovo in the past four months is a separate fact. And if something important does not change, in the coming year half of Kosovo will be emptied”, Azemi says, and adds that employers can remain without workers soon.

The law on the migration of the qualified workforce to Germany has caused concern in Kosovo that a considerable number of citizens, mainly qualified workers, will leave the country.

According to the Kosovo Statistics Agency, two-thirds of Kosovo's population -- aged 15-64 -- are capable of working. The unemployment rate is higher among young people by the age of 24.

Some 44 percent of employees have permanent employment contracts, while 56 percent are on temporary contracts.

The overall unemployment rate is about 26 percent.