Eighty-five and a half million euros to renovate student dormitories and resource centres. More than five thousand pupils and students are meant to get better conditions. The deadline is December 2031, and the final price is already being flagged as possibly exceeding one hundred million euros.

This money is not a simple budget line. Sixty million euros is a loan from the German development bank KfW - meaning debt that has to be repaid. Twenty-one million euros is a grant from the European Union, and 3.85 million comes from the Ministry of Education and Science. The whole thing is called "Energy-efficient rehabilitation of student dormitories and resource centres".

Seven years for two buildings

The first funds for this purpose were secured back in 2019. Seven years later, two dormitories are finished - "Stiv Naumov" in Avtokomanda, where work is nearly done, and "Kuzman Josifovski-Pitu" in Centar, expected to be completed by the end of the year.

The reasons for the delay are almost cartoonish, but real. Nobody had kept the original documentation from when the buildings were constructed. The cadastre listed hundreds of square metres in places where none exist, and omitted hundreds of square metres in places where they do. Permits came slowly. And because the money sat in an account without being spent, the state paid around 120,000 euros purely for failing to use it on time.

That is the price of incompetence, expressed as a figure. One hundred and twenty thousand euros, spent on nothing, while students lived in buildings from the fifties and sixties.

Heavy fuel oil in central Skopje, until recently

The "Kuzman Josifovski-Pitu" dormitory was heated with mazut - in the centre of Skopje, in a city that chokes every winter. The boiler has now been cleaned and sealed, the building is connected to district heating, and there is a small solar array on the roof. Triple-glazed windows, new insulation and new installations have gone in.

The project is split into three phases and covers nine student dormitories, one pupils' dormitory and six resource centres. The second phase, with seven buildings, is in the final stage of tendering. Four buildings - in Ohrid, Prilep, Shtip and the "Tome Stefanovski Senikj" dormitory in Skopje - will be renovated to a standard close to near-zero energy buildings, with design support from the German Fraunhofer institute.

Estimates say that once all the renovations are complete, annual carbon dioxide emissions will fall by 3,400 tonnes and electricity consumption will drop by around 7,700 megawatt-hours - roughly what 1,300 households in the country use in a year.

All of that sounds good. One question remains, though: renovation also means significantly fewer beds. The dormitories will be better, but fewer students will live in them. In summer they will operate as hostels so they do not become, as it was put, "a bottomless pit".

So - better conditions for fewer people. Who will take care of those who do not get one of those beds, nobody said. And that question will arrive long before 2031.