From Agron Çuedari
Part Three
Memorie.al / After the minister introduced me in his office to the three deputy ministers, who had also been appointed to those positions only 5–6 months earlier – Maqo Bleta, Faik Çina, and Bujar Bedalli – and then to the staff of the Balance Directorate, and later in the meeting hall to all the employees of the ministry’s apparatus, I went to the office where I would work. According to what the directorate’s employees told me, that office had been closed for months, because until a few months earlier, the activity of that directorate had been carried out outside the ministry building. For many years, the director there had been R. Shehu, a prominent personality valued for his work in that position.
Continued from the previous issue
But a few months earlier, when he had been entrusted with the duty of deputy minister, one of his signatures regarding the liquidation of some stock materials had been assessed as a serious violation, and not only was he dismissed, but he was also sentenced to two years in prison. After that, to keep its activity under tighter control, by a special decision of the minister, the Directorate had been accommodated with offices inside the Ministry’s premises, where I also found it. The four offices of the specialists and mine were on the first floor of the building, overlooking “Skënderbej Square” and the National Bank. The Balance Directorate had a staff of 12 employees.
Most of them were experienced and had been in that position for a long time. All had higher education as economists or mechanical, electrical, chemical, and wood engineers. All had worked in enterprises inside and outside Tirana and knew well the material-technical base of the country and the imports of the sectors we covered. In those years, when the socialist system was in force, the entire economy of the country was centralized. Like everything else, the enterprises covered by the Ministry of Industry and Mines were state-owned. Their economic-financial activity, distribution of production within the country and for export, investments, and domestic and imported materials were approved by the government.
In the first days I started working at the ministry, I found all the specialists of the Balance Directorate, according to an annual practice, in the thick of work, immersed in files of enterprise requests for the material-technical base of the 1977 draft plan and in very specific forms with the dimensions of worktable tops, recording in the vertical columns the names of over 140 enterprises and in the horizontal columns hundreds of names and thousands of material specifications. After very laborious work with extended hours from morning until late evening, which had begun in mid-September, by mid-October the balance of needs for the material base (for raw materials one by one and for grouped consumer goods), valued in foreign currency lek, was completed and submitted for approval to the ministry’s collegium, in which all directors of the ministry’s directorates participated.
After discussions and reflection on some suggestions made regarding it, the balance was sent for review and approval to the State Planning Commission, within the set deadline of October 20. While waiting to defend it before that commission, the chief specialist of the balance directorate (the professor, as we called him at the ministry), A. Çoçoli, told me: “Director, from my experience of past years, discussing the balance at the State Planning Commission is a very tricky job. Before them, the two of us will be in the role of students, while they will be the professors examining us. Their tendency is to cut the requests we have submitted, due to the lack of foreign currency funds, which is becoming more and more difficult. Moreover, the prices confirmed by the Ministry of Foreign Trade are rising every year.
Let us insist on securing raw material contingents and the funds for them. We might make some concessions in reducing funds for consumer goods, covering needs with the stocks we have in the ministry’s reserve depots.” After a week of daily meetings and confrontations, with many debates with the specialists of the Balance Directorate at the State Planning Commission, our balance was accepted with minor changes and passed to the government for approval. “I couldn’t believe we would pass this exam so easily,” Ahmeti told me. “I didn’t expect that Eqerem Beci, director of the Balance Directorate in that institution, would be so well-disposed toward us.” It was these words of Ahmeti that made me briefly tell him who Eqerem Beci was. He was a man from Shkodra, who, after finishing his studies in petroleum engineering in Romania, had been appointed as a specialist at the Oil Complex in Stalin City in the 1950s. He lived there for many years with his wife and his parents. On my diploma as a medium-level technician, his name and signature are written. “Eqerem and I go back a long way,” I said. “We are both petroleum men. He was one of the best-prepared and most hardworking specialists, remembered with respect by all oil cadres and employees.” With the approval of the balance at the State Planning Commission, only half the work was done. The other half, equally important and more responsible, limited by the short time available, was:
– Preparing the specified lists of imported materials and sending them to the three foreign trade enterprises: Mineral-impex, Industrialimpex, and Makina-import, according to the nomenclature determined for them.
– Preparing the specified lists of materials to come from imports during 1977 for the material-technical supply enterprise in Durrës and distributing them to the 140 enterprises covered by this ministry.
Through daily, dedicated work until midnight, in the first ten days of November, within the deadline set by the government, these tasks were also accomplished.
A week later, the specified import plans were sent to each enterprise, instructing them to sign contracts with the material-technical supply enterprises in Durrës. Relieved from this exhausting work and from being confined to the office for two months, accompanied by two specialists from the directorate, A. Çoçoli and A. Pano, we went to the Industry and Mines Supply Enterprise in Shkozet, Durrës. As the only enterprise under the Balance Directorate, it was large not only in the number of employees and well-established specialists in the sectors they covered, but also in its very large premises, squares, and warehouses filled to the brim with materials, equipment, and machinery used in the enterprises covered by the Ministry of Industry and Mines. The next day, the three of us together, accompanied by the enterprise director, went to Elbasan, Patos, Rrëshen, and Tirana, where other warehouses of reserve goods of this ministry were located.
Two days before the end of 1976, in the meeting hall of the apparatus employees, the Minister, after wishing us all a happy new year, ordered us that during those holidays, each directorate should stay in contact with the enterprises we covered, with the aim of starting the work as well as possible in the first days of the new year. At the end of the meeting, he called me to his office and gave me this order: “In the first week of January, you will not stay in the office. It will be good both for the work and for you to go on service visits to some of the enterprises our ministry covers, to get to know their managers, their economic activity, and to resolve the concerns they may have about the lack of the most necessary materials for fulfilling the January tasks. You will meet the chairmen of the executive committees and give them my regards. You will tell them that I sent you and that together with the heads of the Industry Sections, we will go to all the enterprises of your district to see and help them fulfill the January plan. You will start the service visits with the northeastern districts. Dress warmly, because it is very cold there.”
On January 3, 1977, together with A. Çoçoli, with a pad of stamped authorizations in my bag, getting into a Chinese-made “BC” car from the pool of foreign specialists, which was under the Balance Directorate, we took the road to go to the northeastern districts of the country. It was the first time I was going to those areas. The first day we stayed in the Mirdita district. In Rrëshen we first met the chairman of the Executive Committee, conveyed the minister’s regards and the order he had given me for him, that together with the head of the district’s industry section, we would go to all the enterprises covered by our ministry to see the start of work in those first days of the year and to resolve any concerns they might have about the lack of material base. After a very friendly meeting with him, we first went to the copper mine and smelter in Rubik, and then to all the copper mines in Kurbnesh, Reps, Derven, Kaçinar, Spaç, to the geological enterprises and those of wood processing.
Late in the evening, the three of us together informed the Chairman of the Executive Committee about the progress of work in those first two or three days and the resolution of the concerns they had about the missing material base. The next day, we went to the Puka district. Following the same ritual, after meeting with the Chairman of the Executive Committee, together with the head of the industry section, we went to the copper extraction mines in Qafbar, Qafmal, Tuç, to the geological enterprise and the forest exploitation enterprise in Fushë Arëz. On the third day, we went to the Tropoja district. With great difficulty we crossed Qafmal and then the slopes of the Drin valley, to arrive in “Bajram Curri,” where the snow that had fallen those days was over a meter deep. After meeting the Chairman of the District Executive Committee, together with the head of the industry section we went to the Fierza Hydroelectric Plant, to the Quartz mine in Kërnajë, to the Chromium mine in Kam, to the geological enterprise and the Wood Processing enterprise. Blocked by the snow in “Bajram Curri,” we stayed two nights.
On the fifth day, we went to the Kukës district with the same ritual; we went to the copper mine and smelter in Rexhepaj, to the mines of Gjegjan, Golaj, and Thirë, to the Kalimash chromium mine, to the Geological Enterprise and the Wood Processing Enterprise. After reporting in the evening to the Chairman of the Executive Committee about the day’s meetings, we had dinner together with him at the city’s Tourist Hotel. In all four of those districts, both the Chairmen of the Executive Committees and the enterprise directors thanked us for being close to them in those cold winter days and for the help we gave the enterprises with the material base they lacked, and especially for the appreciation and recognition for their friend, Minister Pali Miska, who had worked many years in those areas as an enterprise director and high party leader. To go to the Dibër district, we traveled via a short but difficult road along the Drin valley, linking Kukës with Peshkopi.
After being blocked for two hours by snow at Kala e Dodës, with the help of a vehicle that towed us 500–600 meters, we arrived in Peshkopi late in the evening. The next morning, after meeting the Chairman of the Executive Committee, we went to the marble mine in Muhur. There, for the first time, I saw how marble for export was cut into cubic blocks as large as a kiosk. After also going to the Wood Processing Enterprise, we left Peshkopia and took the road to the giant of the mining industry, the chromium mine in Bulqiza. As one of the largest mines in the country, the Balkans, and Europe, with large and high-quality production of chromium ore, sought for export as far as distant China, this mine, like the oil industry, was under the daily attention of the ministry and the government. Together with Ahmeti, along the way we agreed that in the meeting we would have with the mine managers, we would open the bag and tell them to ask for whatever they wanted, and we would give it to them, with the authorizations in hand.
The director of the mine in those years was Todo Manço, a distinguished personality, a hardworking and outstanding organizer, highly valued by the Council of Ministers and the Party Central Committee. After also going to the chromium mine in Batër, Mat district, we arrived in Burrel in the evening. The next day we went to the Wood Processing Enterprise inside the city, and then to the first two hydroelectric plants built in our country, Ulëz and Shkopet. In the evening we arrived in Tirana. After a week of exhausting work, in the dead of winter, in unheated hotels, covered with three or four blankets at night, surprised by the welcoming reception of the locals, especially when sitting in the mine clubs they treated us to fried meat and pork ham, which I enjoyed for the first time, we arrived in Tirana safe and sound. The next day, I went to the minister’s office to report on the meetings I had had in the northeastern districts with the Chairmen of the Executive Committees and enterprise managers. “No need,” Pali told me. “All the committee chairmen and some of the enterprise directors have called me on the phone. They thanked me for this new work method we undertook, to be as close to them as possible. They also spoke very well of you. Besides having behaved very correctly, you helped them by resolving many of the problems they had raised.”
Continuing the conversation, the minister ordered me to draw up a schedule that would foresee meetings with enterprise managers in all central and southeastern districts, and in particular at the Metallurgical Combine in Elbasan, the Chemical-Metallurgical Combine in Laç, the Wood Combine in Elbasan, Shkodër, Laç, and Tirana, the Auto-Tractor Combine in Tirana, the Iron-Nickel and Coal mines in Librazhd, Pogradec, Korçë, Kolonjë, and Memaliaj, the industrial basin in Fier and Vlorë. Within February and March, I also carried out this order. Through these service visits, not only did I get the opportunity to see all the cities of Albania from north to south and from east to west, but I also became acquainted with most of the leading cadres of the District Executive Committees, as well as the managers and chief engineers of the enterprises covered by our ministry.
With them, not only did we work together during the four years I was in that position to fulfill production plans in those important branches of the country’s economic development, but we became and remained friends even in the later years when, like me, many of them were assigned to other duties. The organizational structure of the Ministry of Industry and Mines in those years was of the type approved by the Council of Ministers: one minister, three deputy ministers, eight production directorates according to industry branches, and six functional directorates that were connected to all the enterprises covered by this ministry. In 1977, the organizational structure and leading cadres of the Ministry of Industry and Mines were as follows:
Minister: Pali Miska
Deputy Ministers: Maqo Bleta, Faik Çina, Bujar Bedalli
Production Directorates:
– Petroleum Directorate, Director P. Prifti
– Geology Directorate, Director R. Vladi
– Mines Directorate, Director Th. Dede
– Metallurgy Directorate, Director R. Zonja
– Chemistry Directorate, Director B. Hazizi
– Wood Directorate, Director S. Dimoshi
– Mechanics Directorate, Director Dh. Thanati
– Electronics Directorate, Director B. Parruca
Functional Directorates:
– Planning Directorate, Director J. Zajmi
– Finance Directorate, Director P. Xhillari
– Balance Directorate, Director A. Çuadari
– Investments Directorate, Director P. Nauni
– Cadre Directorate, Director S. Gostivishti
– Organization Directorate, Director H. Osmani
The three deputy ministers, the directors of the directorates, and the specialists had higher education, with professions corresponding to the branches they covered, such as petroleum engineers, mining engineers, mechanical engineers, metallurgists, wood processing engineers, electronics engineers, chemists, geologists, and economists. All had been appointed to the ministry after having worked for over ten years in production enterprises in their respective branches and had been valued not only for their work as specialists but also in managerial and organizational roles. According to the work organization within the ministry, the Balance Directorate, the Planning Directorate, and the Wood Processing Directorate were under Deputy Minister Bujar Bedalli. From the very first meeting with him, where we talked at length about the tasks entrusted to us, but also about our lives, birthplaces, education, residences, the work we had done, and our two families, quite naturally I became convinced that with Bujar, I would get along very well and we would go excellently during the years we would work together.
Six months after I had moved to work in Tirana, in the last days of March, the Executive Committee approved my request to be settled with my family in Tirana. The house, with two bedrooms and a kitchen, on the third floor of a newly completed building, was located on “Gjon Buzuku” street, to the left of “Rruga e Dibrës,” before reaching the Medrese. Without delay, in the first week of April, I went to my family in “Stalin City,” where after discussing with Donika’s mother; we decided to move immediately to Tirana. After arranging Donika’s resignation from work, we went to the City Party Committee to start her paperwork as quickly as possible for Tirana. The next day, we handed over the house to the Municipal Enterprise. We placed Kozeta with our cousin’s family, E. Dervishi, who lived very close to our house, for the three months remaining until she finished eighth grade. With tears in our eyes, after saying goodbye to Sofija and Bari, the neighbors on the stairs and in the building, with the family – mother, Donika, and little Albana, whom we could hardly separate from her peer Ermonela (daughter of Th. Çaliq) as she cried – we set off for the new home in Tirana.
In the following three or four months, everything went well in our family. By decision of the cadre branch of the Party Committee, Donika started work in May at the Mineral-Impex Enterprise of the Ministry of Foreign Trade, in the non-ferrous metals sector, tasked with receiving offers, signing contracts, and importing blocks, profiles, and sheets of copper, bimetal for cartridges for the Poliçan military plant, and mercury for the production of polystyrene at the Soda Plant in Vlorë. Kozeta, after finishing eighth grade with all tens, joined us in Tirana in June, and in September, with the right to study she had obtained in “Stalin City,” she registered and started high school at the “Asim Vokshi” Foreign Languages School, in the English branch. Albana, just a few days after arriving in Tirana, got to know and became friends with her peer Lola, who lived two floors above, and spent all day with dolls, dressing and undressing them in the dresses their mother sewed. In September, she also started first grade at the “Kongresi i Përmetit” elementary school.
Mother, as the lady of the house, did all the housework, cooked excellently, took care of Albana, and together with the elderly women of the stairwell, drank coffee at each other’s homes. The transfer and housing in Tirana, besides many other good things I will recount later, gave our family the opportunity to be closer and to go more often to Shkodra, where my brother Iljazi lived with Asija and their three children: Nexhi, who had just finished his medical studies at the State University of Tirana, and Merita, who was in high school. Beni, who had finished the Ministry of Internal Affairs School in the Insurance branch, was assigned to work in Korçë. Unlike before, when we met less often because we were far apart, now we would go even without notice and often spent Sundays together. Albana and Kozeta stayed there longer in the summer months and together went to the beach in Shirokë or on the Drin. After Nexhi’s marriage to Gazmor, and later also the marriage of my aunt’s daughter, Leta, to Bektash, visits to Shkodra were not only more frequent but also longer. You couldn’t leave without staying two nights, because from one family it had become three, and we had to go to all for lunches or dinners.
Other families from our family root from our early years, from our clan and fellow villagers, had also become residents of Tirana before us, and we connected with them through comings and goings at family celebrations and joys. Frequent were those with my first cousins, with the families of Nesim and Qenam, with Majrena and her son Bashkim, with Halit’s children, Enver and Baki, with the children of uncle Hajdër, Skënder and Arta, with Asija’s parents, Petref and Xhixhi, their son Bardh and daughter Leta, with Mina, my father’s cousin, with Habip, his wife Refije and their sons, with Tosun’s family, etc. We also established kind and very friendly relations with the Zaloshnja family, Shkëlqim, Arta, and their two daughters, Mimoza and Jerina. From early childhood, my mother had told me that with the family root of Hysen Zaloshnja, who lived in Berat, we had tribal ties and were cousins. In the years when I was attending the seven-year school in Vlorë, during my many journeys back and forth, I was a very welcome guest for dinner at their home. I knew that besides Qemal and Tefta, Uncle Hysen and Aunt Gjyrxhia had another son, Shkëlqim, but since he worked and lived in Tirana, I had never met him.
After a month of having started work at the ministry, according to a tradition practiced in those years, when a new balance director was appointed in one of the ministries, because the work connected them to each other, the balance directors of other ministries would go and congratulate their new colleague in his office and together have a coffee. Among those who congratulated me was also the Director of the Balance Directorate of the Ministry of Light and Food Industry, Shkëlqim Zaloshnja. After he sat down and wished me good work, he asked me where I was from originally, about my education, and the jobs I had worked before. Right away, I answered: “Like you, I am originally from Skrapar, a mechanical engineer, living with my family in ‘Stalin City,’ the son of your cousin Refije from Therepel.” That was enough. Moved and tearful, he stood up and embraced me. Without saying a word, from my office he called his wife Arta on the phone and told her: “I’m going to make a surprise. I’ll come for dinner with a relative of mine whom I am meeting for the first time.” The reception they gave me that dinner was very warm.
After I told them everything they wanted to know about my mother, whom they had met during the war years, about Iljaz and his family, and also about my childhood, education, family, and my working years up to the days I had come to Tirana, we had dinner and then I got up to leave them, to catch the last city bus that would take me to Laprakë, where I was living temporarily until we got the house. Both at once, but Arta more insistently, grabbed me by the arm and sat me back down. They did not let me leave their house, not only that night, but for the entire time until I was settled with a house in Tirana. This friendly and kind connection between our two families continued in the years that followed. Both Donika and I often stayed with them. With their behavior and culture, as well as the respect they showed for us, it was always a pleasure to be near them. A year had passed since I started working at the Ministry. With the experience I had gained, the draft plan for the material-technical base for 1978, together with the directorate’s specialists, we prepared and submitted to the State Planning Commission within the set deadline.
One of those days, surprised by the phone notification from the duty officer at the building entrance that the Minister of Light and Food Industry, Kristaq Dollaku, was coming to see me, I went out of my office to meet him in the corridor. We had known each other years earlier, when I was working and living in “Stalin City” and he was the Director of the Textile Combine in Berat. On this unexpected visit, he was accompanied by the Balance Director of that ministry, Shkëlqim Zaloshnja. After meeting me, he turned to Shkëlqim and said: “Let me introduce you to a friend of mine, Agron Çuadari, about whom Deputy Prime Minister Adil Çarçani spoke so highly to us.” Without telling the minister that we knew each other and were cousins, apparently somewhat outraged by the criticisms Adili had made to them about not submitting the draft plan on time, Shkëlqim turned to the minister with these words: “I have known this one since he was small, and I have business with him. Let you know, when I started dealing with this work, he was still wet behind the ears. How do you think that he knows and is more capable than me, that you brought me here to get experience from him?!” Memorie.al
