Serb-Montenegrin community asks for a school

SHKODRA, March 13 – The Serb-Montenegrin minority living in northern Albania repeated its call for opening a school in their mother language, the only shortcoming in their coexistence with the Albanian society, according to Gazeta Shqiptare newspaper. Residents of Vraka village in Gruemire commune say they had long been promised to have a school in their Slavic language, but nothing has been done until now. Their children participate at the same school with their Albanian friends. They also say they should have separate lessons in their own language. Vraka may be considered the ‘capital’ of the Slav minority in Albania, in 1990 the village had some 2,000 Slav inhabitants.
Following the fall of the communist regime in 1990 many of them left for Montenegro and others were also sent to Podujeve in Kosova where then-Yugoslav authorities founded the Vraka e Re village. They have always had good relations with Albanians and have got the property like all other farmers in the country. But they lack a school. “Children are forgetting their mother language. They know how to speak but not how to write it,” says 56-year old Mirko. An Albanian school official in Vrake says that there are quite a few Slav kids so that a school in their language is not realizable.