UNMIK ON
AIR
By Birol
Urcan
Novobrdo or ‘Artana’ – as it was called in the 11th Century, used to be a metropolis. The Saxons founded the city in the first centuries of this era and named the settlement Noiberg, or ‘New Hill’. According to some historians, by the 11th Century the place had grown into a sizeable town with 40.000 inhabitants, while London had only 10.000 residents at that time.
Today Novobrdo has only about
5.000 inhabitants, and one can hardly call it a town as there is very little
economic activity: Novobrdo does not even have a barber shop these days.
CUT - Because we
don’t have a barber shop here, my father takes me to Gjilan for haircut.
Here we don’t have a barbershop, that’s why we do our haircut in
Pristina or Gjilan
But Novobrdo, ‘Artana’ or
‘Noiberg’, as it was called a long time ago, lived through different times and
not always lacked economic activity.
65 year old Sahit Bunjaku was born
here and lived in Novoberdo whole his life.
CUT - The barbershop used to be here, exactly in this place where
these stones are. The owner had bought it from a Serb guy in 1977 and his name
was Hajzer. His shop was ruined during the time of occupation and he couldn’t
found a perspective here anymore, therefore he left for Switzerland and I think
he is still living there.
After the hairdresser left, nobody
took the initiative to set up a new barbershop, although more than 1.000
people, out of a total of 5.000 inhabitants, are reported to be unemployed in
Novobrdo.
Mehmet Gashi works in the Office
for unemployed persons and explains that his office organizes trainings in four
fields: training for bakers, office management, computer skills and general
career development.
CUT – With the help of International Labor Organization (ILO) a
project that started now will include some new training courses. We would
organize and include also trainings for barber. Since in our municipality we
don’t have any barber, in cooperation with the Center for employment in
Pristina we decided to send jobseekers to practice and train in a barbershop,
and then to come back to our municipality and open a barbershop. The
inhabitants of our municipality would welcome that.
Economy experts say that
Novobrdo’s problem is a general issue all over Kosovo.
Mustaf Ibrahimi, vice president of
Kosovo’s Chamber of Commerce, points out that there are whole neighborhoods
with a mini-market on every corner, but not one single shoemaker.
CUT - I think that the Chamber of commerce should organize training
and proper education for certain business activities that are not in included
right now in educational system. We are in contact with Ministry of education
and very soon, together with other ministries, we will start trainings and
issuing certificates for such an activities. I think that we have to be engaged
more in this issue and with this we will have better employment opportunities
and the citizens could get better services.
Journalist Delfin Pllana writes a
weekly column in his newspaper, dealing with the discrepancy between market
needs and the services or products offered to the citizens.
His column gives plenty of viable
business ideas and is published every Saturday in daily Express.
CUT –This idea appeared while I was studying in Germany, in one
weekly magazine I saw this kind of column and when I came back here I thought
why not write similar one here.
There is no lack of barber shops
in Pristina or in most other municipalities, but with some investigation one
can find out which services or products are still needed in a certain area.
This information is the first step towards a new and successful business.