Paper License Plates Leave Kosovo Drivers Frustrated

Agim Demaku, a resident of Pristina, is waiting impatiently in line at the civil registration office for provisional license plates that will enable him to drive abroad.

The contract with the company that supplies permanent plates expired months ago, and for now citizens of Kosovo can only get the temporary ones, which only Albania accepts.

Demaku, 46, told BIRN on Thursday that the delay in solving this problem was doing huge damage to people like him.

"I do not know why the institutions did not take action faster. Apart from Albania, people who have to use these kinds of [temporary] car plates cannot travel anywhere, not even to Macedonia," he said.

"As citizens, we just have to wait because there is nothing we can do about it," Demaku complained.

Since June, Kosovo nationals wanting to register their vehicles have only been able to obtain temporary paper license plates because of delays in the procurement process for the supply of proper plates.

At the civil registration office in Pristina, locals wait in line for the paper plates, which are in danger of dissolving in the rain if left outside. Even with them, they can only drive to Albania.

Asked when the problem would be solved, the Interior Ministry told BIRN that the lack of regular vehicles plates started when the contract for the company that supplied them expired.

The business of selecting a new company is now with the Procurement Review Body.

The ministry explained that the tender to select a new supplier was launched last July but was scrapped in October because none of the would-be suppliers met the required standards.

The ministry told BIRN that, due to these complications, in the meantime it made use of the right...