For more than 7 decades, a village in the city of Memaliaj, southern Albania called Zhapokike, suffers the lack of an operational road, which makes it practically impossible for residents to communicate with other villages in the area or even the city center. The conditions are so harsh that they have prompted the depopulation of the village.

For years now, the residents of the village have asked for the government’s intervention but after the long wait, they have finally and voluntarily decided to take the matter into their own hands and building the road through a pooled contribution.

“[The village] has been abandoned because it has been forgotten. It’s been very touching and emotional to see the senior residents contributing their retirement checks to construct the road. There’s been contributions from the US, Greece, Canada, Italy and the entire world, where [family members] have emigrated. There have been people that receive financial aid, who have also made a contribution on the road. The things that attach us to our hometowns are our memories, property and our graves. We deeply hope that we can do something that raises the awareness of government institutions,” – stated Bukurosh Ajdini, a pioneer of the road-building project.

The lack of a functional road is a barrier for the children of this village as well, who in fact are very few in number.

“I need 2 hours to go to school. The road is very bad; no cars can cross around here. We have to walk to school, we get really tired,” – said a young child, who suffers the burden of a nonfunctional road.

However, the road isn’t the only problem for these residents, who also spoke on the shocking truth of the village lacking an actual health center that can provide them the services of a doctor or nurse.

“We don’t even have a doctor. The nurse doesn’t come around because of the bad road. We don’t even have water. We ask the government to help us with one of these pumps. We don’t have any income; we are on medication. We can barely make ends meet,” – stated Fatime Caca, a resident of the remote village.

Euronews Albania went to the Municipality of Memaliaj in order to find out more regarding the issues linked to a lack of basic livelihood investments in this area.

‘A lack of funding’, was the answer we received from the local government, which together with the central one have forgotten this village and many other similar ones in the country’s territory.

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