TIRANA, August 13/ATA/ Albania has been facing major fires in several areas of the country during the last two days, while the situation is being brought under control thanks to the intervention of firefighting forces and the aircrafts.
Prime Minister Edi Rama reacted in a post in the social media to the debates regarding the government purchase of firefighting aircrafts.
“There is an ongoing debate on why Albania does not buy firefighting aircrafts, while there are some calculations that need to be made and the fires of recent days are by no means a matter of one or two or even three aircrafts! Okay, it would be good to have them, but…”, Rama emphasized.
The head of government stated that, “I say, during these days, we have more air assets than any year before, thanks to our fleet and support from the European Mechanism or the United Arab Emirates. Hence, I invite everyone to raise a question: What about our neighbors, Greece and Italy or Turkey and Spain, who are suffering from wildfires worse than any other year, do they have a shortage of aircrafts?!”
“Let me provide some information based on the Greek press’s own references for Greece, for example: Greece has a total air fleet of 77 firefighting aircraft; there are about 20 helicopters; approximately 3,500 other vehicles and firefighters of all types and functions. So, let’s put simply. The more, the better, but still curing the consequences does not eliminate the causes, which are several, are the same for all countries that are suffering from fires this season (some much worse than us, by the way) and are much more complex than they seem when you count the aircrafts,” said Rama. /k.s/j.p/p.s./
