BESA party leader Bilal Kasami joined the calls for a program of subsidies to private companies that will hire ethnic Albanians, and added the demand to make private companies bilingual. The idea also has the backing of the DUI coalition partner under the guise of “diversity in the workplace”. Mandatory diversity hiring in the public sector since the 2001 war has led to thousands of ethnic Albanians being hired but with no actual job assignments.

Kasami went further and said that private companies will have to begin using the Albanian language internally to make sure Albanians can be hired there.

Some of the Albanian university graduates don’t speak Macedonian. The private companies have to implement bilingualism. That will create equal conditions for all citizens to work there, Kasami said.