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Butrint concessionaire pressures employees to resign! NGO with a million dollar business plan

2024-02-13 13:05:56Investigim SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Butrint

The Constitutional Court has not yet said its word regarding the granting of a concession to the archeological park of Butrint.

However, the foundation that has taken it over has started work and among the first decisions made verbally is the demand and pressure on all current employees of the park to resign.

This is the denunciation that has reached the editorial office of Voxnews.al from the employees of the park. They say that last weekend, the foundation's leaders asked all employees of the park's maintenance and conservation administration to resign.

" The request follows a series of threats and intimidation that have increased during the last weeks and months against us in the inability to find violations at work. The goal is to force us to resign ," says an employee of the Butrint administration.

Currently, employees are on employment contracts provided by the state, which fully managed the park before it passed into the hands of a private foundation. After the concession, they say they were promised they would not be affected and continue with business as usual. The same guarantee, the sources say, is offered in the concession contract voted in the Assembly, but which the private foundation does not intend to implement.

The contract and business plan of the foundation itself envisages increasing the number of employees in the archaeological park from the current 14 to 110 people. The question is whether the addition of employees will benefit the good management of the park and increase the scientific work in it, or part of a profitable business plan?

Millions after the concession

Representatives of the Albanian-American Development Foundation, who have the majority on the board of directors of the Butrint Foundation, have tried to avoid the word concession, promising to invest 7 million dollars in 10 years, while the park's income does not exceed 500 thousand dollars per year.

This means, according to these claims, that the foundation will lose two million dollars in this venture. However, the business plan as well as the contradictory statements given by representatives of the foundation and the former Minister of Culture, Elva Margariti, raise doubts.

According to the former minister, there are 2.1 million dollars in the park's coffers, while the entire business plan includes 7.1 million dollars. The difference of 5 million dollars, Margariti declared when defending the concession, will be made available by the foundation. "The fund goes only for cultural heritage programs. The money that will be added will go to Butrint's coffers. Approximately 1 million dollars will go to the archaeological part," said the minister.

But Margariti's statements are contradicted by the foundation's business plan itself. Voxnews.al has provided parts of this plan. It states that the total investment is estimated at around 7.5 million dollars, where most of the money will go towards building new structures for visitors and staff, i.e. restaurants, bars and other accommodation units. For this part, 60 percent of the funds, or about 4 million dollars, have been determined.

For the other part, i.e. the scientific part and the conservation of the heritage, 3.5 million dollars have been determined, of which 2.1 million dollars the park of Butrint has in its treasury, while the difference of 1.4 million dollars with the current income the park is able to generate in about 15 months.

"The project as a whole generates annual operating surplus in year 3 and accumulated surplus in year 7 where it operates with a profit of approximately USD 1.5 million in the following year," the business plan further reads. The agreement also provides that the foundation's board of directors, a five-person institution, will not receive salaries, but will be reimbursed for expenses for themselves and a five-person support staff at a total cost of $140,000 a year. .

Simply put, the five board members and their five assistants will be paid an average of 28,000 dollars per year, at a time when the average annual salary in Albania is somewhere around 8,000 dollars per year.

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This article is exclusive to VoxNews, it is copyrighted according to Law No. 35/2016, "On copyright and related rights". The article can be republished by other media only by citing VoxNews and placing the source link at the end, otherwise any violator will be held responsible according to Article 178 of Law No. 35/2016.


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