{"id":26786,"date":"2023-11-19T20:29:56","date_gmt":"2023-11-19T20:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/belalcazar.org\/?p=26786"},"modified":"2023-11-19T20:29:56","modified_gmt":"2023-11-19T20:29:56","slug":"albanian-ghost-town-where-so-many-men-have-left-for-uk-only-old-people-are-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/belalcazar.org\/world-news\/albanian-ghost-town-where-so-many-men-have-left-for-uk-only-old-people-are-left\/","title":{"rendered":"Albanian ghost town where so many men have left for UK only old people are left"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Ramiz breaks down in tears at the memory of his son leaving to work in London.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Shaking between sobs, the dad explains he feels responsible for the young man\u2019s departure from the Albanian town of Kukes.<\/p>\n

A stroke left Ramiz unable to work and, with no food on the table, his son decided to make the 1,700-mile trip to Britain in a bid to support him.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of the Kukes younger generation are going to London right now, they say London is great for money,\u201d he told the Daily Express. \u201cThere are a lot of fathers like me, especially in the villages.\u201d<\/p>\n

He worries about his son who spent three months in immigration detention and, when he was released, ended up washing cars.<\/p>\n

Money is sent home to his father, but it is not a lot, far from the riches flaunted by some of the migrants who have returned to the town from the UK.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Spend just a few minutes on Kukes’s main street and a car with a British licence plate will almost certainly whizz by. Most of the vehicles are brand new, expensive Mercedes and BMWs.<\/p>\n

READ MORE <\/strong> Spanish ghost village destined to become a tourist hotspot put up for sale[LATEST] <\/strong><\/p>\n

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The contrast to the plight of those who choose to stay couldn\u2019t be more stark. In the fields around Kukes women plough the earth with hand ploughs, panting clouds of condensation into the freezing mountain air.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Homes closer to the mountains have been abandoned entirely. The most intact structures now house livestock with the rest collapsing slowly into the earth.<\/p>\n

According to Sadije Cenaj, another resident of a nearby village, the money earned by her nephews in London saved her life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout them I would be dead,\u201d she told us from her sick bed, proudly holding their picture. \u201cThey pay my medical bills. I have diabetes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her home is surrounded by properties that have been enhanced by the riches earned from Britain, but remain for most of the year empty.<\/p>\n

The owners return only in August for a brief holiday. Since 1990 the population of the region has almost halved due to migration, with the majority of those seeking to leave identifying the UK as their destination of choice.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s the worst thing that can happen,\u201d said Osman, another resident of the same village. \u201cWhen all the younger generation goes abroad to England. How can we survive and live here? I don’t know how people like us will manage, we are old.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Osman has two middle-aged children in the UK, a daughter who lives in Cardiff and a son in London.<\/p>\n

Don’t miss… <\/strong> Albania’s ‘mini London’ made richer thanks to migrants sending money from the UK<\/strong><\/p>\n

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