Student Congress: Unemployment and immigration, the main obstacle in Albania

2024-11-15 19:02:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Student youth organizations from Albania, Kosovo and the region are holding a congress in Tirana to discuss the problems and challenges they currently face. Representatives of these organizations told VOA that unemployment, immigration and poor education are the main obstacles in their lives.

The student congress of organizations from Albania, Kosovo and the region discussed the challenges of young people in the Western Balkans, where, according to the main speakers, emigration due to unemployment prevails.

The organization Qëndresa Gytare, assessed that the state administration and the universities of Albania, due to their clientelistic management and lack of meritocracy, fail to prepare young people with high professional skills according to market requirements.

The head of the organization Qendresa Gytare, Migen Qiraxhi, tells the Voice of America that the departure of young people is being felt by all sectors of public and private life in Albania, so the government needs to undertake appropriate policies to curb the departure of young people and professional engagement their own within their own country.

"The tragedy in our country is that it seems that the rulers do not consider the departure of citizens and young people from the country to be a problem, justifying it with free movement. Free movement is necessary and necessary, but we appreciate that the creation of conditions and opportunities in our country, for citizens to consider it as a safe home, with education and health care, would give all citizens the opportunity not to abandon. I think that no one has the luxury of being separated from family, from property, from the nation, but all this is happening with a very great social tension, which falls on the country as a burden, a drama that we are experiencing every day ", said Mr. Qiraxhi.

On the other hand, the Organization for Quality Improvement in Education has been working for 8 years for academic integrity and against plagiarism in the public universities of Kosovo, as well as student activism.

Dibran Hoxha, representative of the organization, tells Voice of America that Kosovo faces youth migration, which is seen in the decrease in the number of students there, as well as a lack of interest among students to engage in solving the main concerns, such as the quality of low number of university studies as well as poor access to the labor market.

"Our public universities and private colleges accept a large number of students without having any kind of strategy, not even a national one, on how these young people will approach the labor market. This falls as a burden on the backs of students, who spend a lot of financial resources to complete their studies. To a large extent, especially students in private colleges do not receive such high-quality studies, and in the end, after graduation, they remain without access to the labor market. This is the biggest challenge faced by students and young people in Kosovo", said Mr. Hoxha.

Unemployment in Albania and Kosovo is higher among young people, while studies have observed a lack of job vacancies on the one hand, as well as difficulties to be employed in those professions, for which young people are qualified.

In this meeting of youth organizations in the region, it was emphasized that universities fail to make the time that young men and women spend in academic auditoriums as effective as possible from a professional point of view, because these do not address the demands of the time, so young people leave their place and study and integrate in other countries./ VOA