. At the Instrument Factory and the Garment Production Enterprise in the district of Korçë, the introduction and tracking of inter-operational documentation through to the finished product has raised the qualitative level of operational and accounting management, helped prevent excessive expenditure, and avoided cases of damage to and misuse of property. All of this has had an effect on fulfilling and exceeding the enterprise’s net income from one period to the next. Their experience also shows the value of tracking and analyzing production or semi-finished products in the form of a balance sheet, especially in processes such as the various surface-cutting operations for cloth, sheet metal, shoe uppers, soles and rubber, and in the weaving of cloth, knitwear or socks, etc. This work is still done inadequately in many enterprises, and the discrepancies weigh, as if nothing were wrong, on their financial results. There are cases in which a financial officer or manager assigns discrepancies resulting from damage to the workers’ group on the production line or at the workplace where they occurred, but then encounters the court’s ruling: “Stop, this is the wrong way!” But what is the right course? Should we legalize abuses and misappropriations, which are increasing in some individual enterprises? The problem is not limited to failure to meet the six-month plan targets: there has been a considerable excess in production costs at the Knitwear Combine, and worse still at the Food Enterprise, where, although the plan for this period was exceeded by 4 percent, expenditure came to 2.5 million lekë above the amount planned. Of course, there are objective reasons for this overspending, but there are also unjustified excesses in material and labor-pay norms, discrepancies arising from misuse and even embezzlement. But do they harm anyone? No one. The new economic mechanism will not tolerate this overspending. It runs counter to it. Improvements to the documentation will prevent it wherever it occurs, so that it does not burden the enterprise’s net income; otherwise, all employees become “responsible” for the misuse, when individual workers or specific groups of workers should be held accountable. Why do enterprises act this way, and what prevents them from doing otherwise? On the one hand, there is laxity in carrying out and monitoring duties; on the other, there are shortcomings in the legislation, which, although rightly holding warehouse and sales-unit employees responsible for losses, does not hold anyone materially responsible for damage and misuse in the production process, where these are much greater. What improvements need to be made? Enterprises should identify the production units and turn them into workplaces with individual or collective material responsibility, with the workers’ approval. The number of these units may increase as the technological production process and economic management are improved. As for the technical, economic and financial documentation required in each enterprise to implement the tasks of the new economic mechanism, this is a process of study and work that requires careful thought but must not be delayed—particularly since a number of enterprises have already begun operating under the new mechanism. The first of January next year must find the enterprises implementing improved documentation. The new documentation should be such that for every product it records precisely what has been saved and what overspent, who saves and who spends more. No weak link where control is diluted and damage to or misuse of materials and finished products is allowed to go unchecked should be tolerated. The results of this period at many enterprises, such as the carpet-production enterprise, the copper mine, the agricultural-mechanics factory, etc., show that when documentation is monitored and its control power strengthened, and all employees take responsibility for conservation, savings above the plan are achieved. Work must be organized so as to create the concrete conditions and opportunities to monitor and analyze every day not only the program targets but also expenditure in the main areas, putting an end to the mistaken practice observed when these are analyzed only at the end of the month or quarter, when everything is over and their excess cannot be prevented. NIKO RAPI, in the Planning Section of the Executive Committee of the KP of the district, Korçë sion. Here the matter is ultimately tied to the failure to meet the six-month plan targets, the excess in ... and was exceeded by 4 per ... workers. production process and economic management are improved. Improving technical, economic and financial documentation in every enterprise, to implement ... you can no longer prevent their excess.

— 15 thousand dollars have been spent each day during July. — The dollars spent from March 20 through yesterday would have been enough to automate two more districts of the country — Our readers are familiar with the major investments our society has made to improve telephone service for international communications. This is an expression of culture, but also a necessity for sectors of our economy, so that they can communicate quickly with one another and solve production problems. This is why international connections have been given priority, and we can now communicate with almost every country in the world. Four and a half months after these possibilities were created, we visited the General Directorate of PTT to learn about the effectiveness of this measure and the possibilities for further expanding automatic connections within the country. There is no dispute about the convenience this service has brought to state and economic bodies and to private individuals in communicating with the cities of Tirana, Durrës, Korçë and Elbasan, as well as with subscribers in countries throughout the world. The introduction of new telecommunications services, such as telefax and data transmission, mainly with foreign countries, has also helped. But alongside these improvements, the General Directorate of PTT has informed us of a very serious problem that has arisen during this period in automatic international communications. This problem has been analyzed repeatedly at the Directorate. On more than one occasion, managers of ministries, institutions and various enterprises have been alerted to abuses of telephone calls. To put it plainly: recklessness has taken hold, and control has been lacking! Here is what the figures show: In 1988 our PTT paid the administrations of other countries a sum of 260,490 dollars, the difference between the cost of outgoing calls and the revenue from incoming calls. In 1989 this difference was 373,076 dollars. This year, by March 20, expenditure was 90,514 dollars—that is, at the same level as the three-month expenditure of previous years. From March 20 to August 10, however, the difference came to 1,824,000 dollars, or 405,333 dollars per month. In just three days in July, 15 thousand dollars were spent. Furthermore: how is it possible that the average number of pulses for each telephone at RTV is higher than that of some Foreign Trade Enterprises or the General Directorate of the State Bank, which have far more communications with abroad?! Just one of the telephones at the Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology recorded 42,775 pulses in July, or 1,425 pulses a day! In addition, checks carried out by the Tirana PTT Directorate on many official telephones, by reading the meters after 3:00 p.m. and until 6:00 a.m., showed that more “official” calls were made than during official working hours. Examples include NTU, telephone No. 220-39, which registered 3,061 pulses in a single third shift; the Food Combine, telephone No. 248-66, which registered 4,714 pulses in a single third shift; NT Perime, telephone No. 258-23, which registered 4,894 pulses on the second shift and 5,115 on the third; and NFP No. 2, telephone No. 233-66, which registered 1,033 pulses on the first shift, 27 on the second and 3,359 on the third. This list could be extended with many others. This enormous volume of calls has created a very difficult situation for automatic connections abroad. As subscribers themselves may have noticed, it is often extremely difficult to get through internationally, because all the lines are busy. We have not undertaken to analyze every subscriber, because that is impossible. But what we cannot do must be done by every ministry, institution and enterprise, starting with its leaders. There have been complaints from private individuals about the charges incurred by them, but there have been very few complaints from official users about the charges billed to them. How can this be explained? In the face of recklessness with the people’s sweat, where are the passivity and conformism, this way of controlling and demanding accountability? Where are the accountants and inspection bodies? What remains of all the talk about control through the lek and the new economic mechanism? Everyone needs to analyze this problem seriously at their workplace. As we learned at the General Directorate of PTT, technical measures will be taken to limit abuses. Meanwhile, if users do not impose discipline, PTT will be forced, until the foreign-currency balance is restored, to suspend automatic international connections for outgoing calls only, switching them to manual connections through operators. We would add that such a measure, however undesirable it may seem at first, would be welcomed by sound public opinion if this point were also taken into account: been enough to automate two more districts. Everyone wants and calls for this, but before making demands, everyone should think carefully about the expenses incurred when they create “00” figures. The correspondent of “Zëri i popullit” — figure “00”.

For days, the Kurjan reservoir, in the district of Fier, which supplies water to several agricultural economies, has been closed. But the agricultural workers of this area are not sitting idle for a moment. They work day and night to overcome the drought. “We get water to the plants by the fistfuls. All the drainage canals have been closed, and we irrigate from them,” says Vasil Leçka, chairman of Kumani. Every drop of water is life for the plants. We irrigate in this way, very economically, about 50 hectares a day: corn, vegetables, cotton... There is no talk of complaining or making excuses. The struggle is to meet the targets. In the Vidhishtë sector, for example, they are working to obtain 100 quintals of corn per hectare. Meanwhile, Bego Kanani’s brigade is working for 120 quintals of corn per hectare. “We cannot control nature,” they say, “but it depends greatly on us to give the plant what it needs, so we can get the yield we are aiming for.” This applies not only to corn. In cotton too, there are brigades, such as the one in Drizë, working to exceed the yield and obtain 20 quintals per hectare. The situation is more difficult in Strum. All the cadres and specialists are with the brigades. They help organize the work and work alongside the cooperative members. Water is very scarce. Some plants have their thirst quenched by extensive hoeing. “Two hoeings are worth one irrigation,” they say. Water is used mainly for corn. They are growing hybrid corn and are striving to obtain an average yield across the entire area 50 percent higher than the targets. The brigade led by Idriz Bomja is working to obtain 25 quintals more than the yield target for every hectare. They are also keeping a close eye on cotton generally, for which Faik Tomorri is responsible. Its condition is quite good. The situation in Levan is somewhat different. There is more water, and more corn, vegetables, fodder crops, etc., are being irrigated. Irrigation is carefully managed to avoid wasting this much-needed water. At the water directorate they say that pumps have been put into operation at several points to draw water from the Vjosa. Irrigation is now being carried out this way in Kutë, Hekal and Romës, Gorishovë, Frakull, etc. Water is also being sent to Seman from the Vjosa through a pipeline installed in recent days. VANGJEL STEFA correspondent of “Zëri i popullit”

In the district of Berat, export targets for the seven-month period were exceeded by more than 4 million lekë. With the exception of two agricultural enterprises, the others met or exceeded their objectives. “Guided by the motto ‘without exports there are no imports,’ the workforce of the food industry enterprise ‘Koli Myzyqari’ has worked, exceeding its targets on this front by nearly 3 million lekë. The forestry enterprise has distinguished itself by taking care to obtain more secondary products from the forests. With a view to the foreign market, they produced more than planned: 20 quintals of chestnuts, bay leaves, linden flowers, olive twigs, etc. Services were intensified on plots where rosemary and basil are grown, and more produce was obtained from these lands. For this period, the plan was exceeded by 20 percent. To increase products for export, it is planned to recruit 40 more workers. The workers of the oil-processing plant and the textile combine also completed their tasks with an excess, while the cooperative sector, as a result of reaching the sales markets earlier, managed to earn 1.5 million lekë more than planned. The workers of the meat-and-dairy enterprise, the collection enterprise, etc., have also distinguished themselves. (According to ATSH)

Pharmaceutical services are also expanding in the villages of the district of Kukës. There are 30 pharmacies and pharmaceutical agencies operating throughout the district, staffed by 17 senior pharmacists. Seven dispensaries have opened in nine remote villages, including Shemri, Arrën and Bushtricë. Dispensaries and pharmacies have also opened in Zapod, Borje and gjëkjo. Pharmaceutical agencies have also opened at the workers’ centers in Golaj and Gjinaj, at the copper school in Rexhepaj and gjëtkë. One such agency recently opened at the chrome mine in Kalimash as well. Senior pharmacists Karafil Hajru-lahi and Daut Ahmeti, who work at the pharmacies in the towns of Kukës and Krumë, are distinguished not only for their prompt and courteous service, but also for studying plants used in folk medicine. (According to ATSH)

— From the writer’s notebook — You travel to write a somewhat free-form piece. You feel a kind of pleasure at what you are going to encounter. You also feel a certain unease when you still do not know whether all the material you need will emerge there. The closer you get to the place, the more you want to look around on both sides of the road and reflect. You have entered the Vjosa valley. You feel as if you are meeting Krk hristin and Qesarat for the first time. (Where did a wellspring of the past come from, planting here these two names remembered by the two Romans—Qesarin and Krasinin?) Further on, the village beside the road stirs you so sweetly with its beloved name—liras. Coincidences are called into question. Just as one cannot put a stop to deep historical inquiries into them, as long as one has a head on one’s shoulders, given that on our western shores too Caesar and Pompey confronted one another. Further on, lirasit, revealed, and the ancient statue of Demetra (Dheu Ninë). Opposite are the slopes of Mount Këndrevicë, which seems to hold its gaze toward the Këndreva of the Arbëreshë in Calabria, long since separated from it. Beneath it lies the village of Sinanaj, said to be the birthplace of the famous architect Sinani, who rose to become the Michelangelo of the Orient in Turkey. It makes you want to stop and pass by Ali’s place once more. In every stone there, in all the air surrounding it, Byron’s immortal events about him resound. You rejoice that the name Ali Pashë Tepelena has been given, with thought and wisdom, to the castle wall facing the city’s main road. Yet you are just as saddened to notice that even a bas-relief once placed at the castle gate, bearing the face of the great poet to whom we Albanians owe so much, has long since disappeared, and no one remembers to put it back. You enter the castle. You want to look and weave once more in your imagination that magnificent Albanian world described in the poem. More than the ordinary sight of the buildings erected above, inside the castle, what saddens you is what has been concealed beneath them and condemned to “burial”! What narrow minds keep repeating such acts?! You walk toward Gjirokastër. A narrow footbridge of wooden slats over the river, leading up to Hormovë, is crossed by a group of young people. I remembered those faraway girls I once met on the road here, when Byron was going to Tepelenë. As he describes them from afar in a “note to his mother,” he had seen the most beautiful women in the world; they walked with their heads bowed, their hands busy, behind their horses (while the men strutted in their warrior clothes). Those girls still walk through the memories of the poem just as Byron saw them. “What do you think we should write, comrade Flamur?” I say, among other things, to the chairman of the Executive Committee in Gjirokastër as we share a friendly coffee. He pursed his lips here with modesty and simplicity, so much so that, judging from the outside, one could even have taken it for indifference toward the article. “You can write about whatever you like,” he added afterwards. “If you find something good, it gives us encouragement. If you find something wrong, that too will spur us on to put it right quickly!” The truth is that everywhere people are on the move, working to turn the Party’s latest decisions into concrete achievements and joys for their people. At the “Asim Zeneli” cooperative, on the hills opposite the city, we see the enduring farmer of the new mountain village. You see familiar and unfamiliar faces. Your eyes follow the movement of people, vehicles and livestock. As if they belonged to one world, bound together by a single thread of shared life, they come and go through the village’s many paths. Heading toward the center or home, in their freedom, they sometimes move quickly, carried along by the momentum of the day’s lively work; at other times, now in the evening, they slowly bring the day’s final movements to a close, as if they know they are going to rest peacefully through the night. There is a particular vitality in the village’s resilience. The middle-aged men (like Muhameti and Bejkushi and their companions, who refuse to accept that age has taken them away from youth), all sweat and humor, are at the head of the young people, busy here and there organizing a joyful gathering (for which they had found an “excuse” just to have it!). Then the party gets going beautifully on its own. Lab women move around their courtyards or along their paths with the age-old awareness of household tasks. The lambs and young kids, leaping about in the courtyards, stamping their little feet and wagging their tails happily, express in this way their joy at having been born. Once you have entered this scene, calling to you from every side, you try to find something of the new appearance emerging from the changes taking place in the village. We sit on an open hillside and talk at length, first with Belul Hila, secretary of the cooperative bureau. (I cannot refrain from mentioning an incident that shows the character of people like this, from some time ago.) I met him in Tirana while he was walking with a fellow student of the Party School, a teacher. Beluli was then a cooperative member and was completing the final month of the Party School. “Do you have a problem?” I asked on the way, glancing at the teacher. “No,” he replied firmly. When I saw this, the teacher was so surprised and pleased that Beluli had not even told him, his instructor, that he was a fellow villager, despite having been his student for so long. This was the best man in our society, and so on... (Continued on page 3)

In Llogara. (Photo: N. Xhufka)