Dragash, 27 June, 2024
Upon arriving in Kosovo, after his stay in Brussels, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, today visited the Municipality of Dragash, which was affected yesterday by water floods caused by heavy rains. He, together with the Minister of Local Government Administration, Elbert Krasniqi, the Mayor of Dragash Municipality, Bexhet Xheladini and representatives of the Emergency Management Agency, also visited the areas most affected by these floods, namely the Kuk village of this municipality.
Prime Minister Kurti’s complete media statement after the visit to Kuk:
Together with the Mayor of the Municipality of Sharri/Dragashi, Bexhet Xheladini and the Minister of Local Government Administration, Elbert Krasniqi, and with the representative from AME, who is also in the Evaluation Committee, Chairman of the Evaluation Committee, Kastriot Lajçin, and with other colleagues from the Municipality of Dragash, we came to the village of Kuk to see up close the great consequences caused by yesterday’s great flood that had the proportions of a natural disaster since the rocks of Mount Sharr became bigger than as the rivers of Kosovo.
We are here in the place where the bridge was blocked both at the end and above and then enormous amounts of water flooded the village. We are very lucky that this large amount of water, this gigantic volume yesterday due to the heavy rainfall and hail, shot at a time during the day when none of the residents were in the basement of the house. Otherwise, if they had shot in the basements of the house, they would have died, since the water has flooded the basements of the residents in the houses of Kuk village.
In this disaster, we were lucky that no one died. We have seen earlier, a few weeks ago, how in Germany there were also human casualties precisely because when floods occur, people who are in basements are fatally endangered. But here we were lucky, and I’m glad for that.
Now, with the evaluation commission, we have to see how much we can help, what to repair and rebuild, because the damage is great. They are not immediately correctable. There is damage to the infrastructure, and not only to the roads and bridges, but also to the water supply pipes, to the sewerage pipes, as well as to the pipes of the Telecom of Kosovo, to the various cables that also provided the electricity supply. There are pillars that now pose a danger to people and we will need to deal with all this together with the municipality.
I thank the mayor Bexhet Xheladini for his hospitality in these difficult times. We must be close to the citizens without distinction, since this is a natural disaster, which is also related to climate change, or even to the environmental crisis that has gripped not only our region and our continent. Therefore, we must take the measures in order to recover what we can, but also learn the lessons so that such situations do not repeat here or anywhere else.
Last modified: June 28, 2024