The olive harvest season has started and for most farmers the first problems are appearing. The main one at the moment is the lack of manpower. Farmers raise the concern that the daily employment of a worker varies from 3 thousand to 4 thousand ALL. This fact forced them to pick the olive themselves.

“There is no labor force, we harvest them ourselves with a lot of effort. The working day of a worker has cost 35 thousand lek, we cannot afford to pay workers. This year has been dry and there are not many olives left, but we have a lot of roots, but it has given us little production”, said the farmer.

Even the administrator of the oil production plant raises as a concern the lack of manpower, which from year to year is appearing even more as a problem.

“We find it difficult to find workers and we don’t have enough in the factory and this situation is getting worse and I don’t know where it will go. The price has not changed this year, there is quality, it depends on the olive variety and it goes up to 10 thousand lek. Farmers should continue harvesting because later there is a possibility of infection and later it is not worth harvesting”, said Vesaf Musaj, administrator of the oil factory.

The largest areas of olive trees are cultivated in the Vlora region. There are over 350,000 olive trees planted, among them centuries-old ones, mainly in the villages of Panaja, Nartë, Kaninë, Bestrovë and Trevllazër, where part of the production is exported to EU countries.