At a roundtable organized by KDI, members of the Turkish community in Prizren had the opportunity to point specific questions and requests to local level decision-makers. At this discussion along with citizens was present the Deputy Mayor of the Municipality, Mr. Eshref Memaj, Mr. Sengjar Karamoçu, Chairperson for Communities and Mr. Ertan Simitc, Director of Economy and Finance.

Among the main concerns of the members of this community that came up were: lack of Turkish-language books based on the new curriculum, lack of parks within residential areas, respect for criteria in building collective housing, fuel sale points within the residential areas, the installation of mobile phone antennas in various buildings without any criteria.

With the change of the new education curricula, the need for changing books has also arisen, and one of the concerns of the Turkish community’s parents remains the lack of Turkish-language books based on the new educational curriculum.

Deputy Mayor of Prizren Mr. Eshref Memaj stressed the readiness of the Municipality of Prizren to address any requests and concerns without any ethnic discrimination, seeing this meeting as very reasonable in listening to the concerns and demands that will arise from residents of the Turkish community living in the city of Prizren with the surrounding.

Ertan Simitci, representative of the Turkish community and at the same time Director of Economy and Finance, elaborated the draft municipal budget planning process for year 2019, whereby he said that “in the Office for communities a budget for improving living conditions and housing of communities has been allocated, based on citizens’ requests. We have also made efforts to address many of the Turkish community’s requests in the draft municipal budget, stressing the realization of the Turkish Cultural Center project in 2019.

Another concern of the Turkish community in the municipality of Prizren remains the lack of access to “Hello Municipality”, opened by the municipality of Prizren. This approach of the municipality deprives the Turkish and Bosnian communities to address the demands and concerns in this mechanism despite the fact that the Turkish and Bosnian languages are official languages in Prizren municipality.

This activity has been supported within the Project “Together we can” supported by Embassy of Czech Republic, whose main objective is the protection and respect for communities rights to be informed and involved in the decision-making process at the municipal level.