When a new year comes, everyone plans to achieve better in any aspect. Governments and administrations too plan for the betterment of their country and people. All the plans of the government organs should be presented to the people in order to make the citizens to be the part of the action plan.
As the home of many national and international organizations, Addis Ababa has been moving as expected in the past few years. It is true that the city has encountered with major challenges including housing, job creation, and good governance. However, many changes have been observed after the coming to power of the new government. These changes manifest the aggressive works of the city administration with a zealous desire to achieve its goals and to have a bold presence on the progress of the city.
During a short stay with a local media, Deputy Mayor of Addis Ababa, Adanech Abebie has presented the core target plans of the City Administration for the current budget year. Though the capital city has numerous problems, the city administration has gone through plenty of new projects to make the city more compatible with its residents.
The Deputy Mayor said that with regard to the clean water, the city administration has been in progress on building two major water projects in two sites, around Sululta and Legedadi phase II, to elevate the clean water problem in the city. While these projects are under construction, the city administration also focuses on the well being of the farmers and residents in those areas and takes a good care of them to enjoy their proper lives.
According to the Deputy Mayor, last year, 100,000m3 clean water was generated from 55 water holes dug by the current city administration. The plan for 2014 is to produce 120,000 m3.
This kind of agreements has a win-win advantage to the government and the citizens because it paves the way to work in collaboration as the problem is serious. This is due to the city’s rapid growth and it becomes the center of many organizations which leads to one of the most populous cities in Africa.
As to the Deputy Mayor, one of the core projects that the administration wants to achieve is related with job creation to the city youth. The administration plans to launch mega, medium and small to projects. As to her, just like the industry parks, the planned mega project is the construction of ‘Youth Shade Cluster’. This helps the youth to be more productive and industrious so as to help their lives. For small and medium level, the administration has planned around 200 new projects that help the citizens.
The administration has given appropriate place to women in the plan. In different parts of the city, women, even little girls, are seen on the sides of streets during night time. This kind of life these women are in is not preferred by people because they do not have any choice to see the bright future. Therefore, the city administration, as to the Deputy Mayor, has planned to build a ‘Women Rehabilitation Center’. This center will provide several trainings for women to help themselves and achieve their goals.
In relation to housing and ownership, there are a number of problems raised from the people. Many of the claims are plausible and cannot be denied. People raise questions for equal distribution of resources in the city as the housing problem is the major.
According to the information from the Deputy Mayor, it is true that housing is the major problem in the city. She said: “We also announced that we will transfer the condominium houses in the near future. One thing that the people of the city should understand is that those condos are not fully finished in a way the residents can live in. Most of them had various problems including sewage problems. It was hard to just transfer those condos with all their problems. Everyone knows that the government is in different problems, and it was hard for the Commercial Bank of Ethiopian to lend money to finish these projects. For these and so many various reasons, we couldn’t transfer the houses yet. But now, we got around 5 billion Birr loan from the bank so that we can elevate these problems and ready to transfer to the people. All these precautions we took were to protect the residents from extra charges. Most of them got their house, except Koye Feche. Even in this site, half of the residents got their house.”
The Deputy Mayor pinpointed that the core idea here is how to increase the supply. Therefore, they plan to build more condominiums in the city. As to her, the city administration has organized a package in five ways to build and increase the number of houses. Basically, the first choice is building condos like the previous ones which cannot be achieved, the government couldn’t build condos due to the current problem in the country, and there is a scarcity of finance in the government vault. So that, the government will not build condos as it used to do.
The second option is inviting foreign investors and associating them with local contractors to build these houses. The administration signed agreements with companies that have a desire to work in this sector along with providing sites for construction. However, there is a chance to cancel the agreement if the houses are not affordable by the citizens, and when these companies focus only on their profits, they terminate their contract as well. By the help of this scheme, they plan to build 1 million houses within the next five years.
The third way, as to her, is involving ten thousand house seekers who registered in 2013 to form associations and build their own houses. Most of the associations are undergoing the process and at this time they are ready to start construction.
The fourth is creating a system connecting the ones who have finance with those who have land. The administration started the process with ‘Gojo Bridge’, and this scheme will begin construction this year. The last but not least is that the city administration plans to build 9,000 houses with its own budget. The administration also plans to build 4,000 condos like the previous ones, and 5,000 house with better qualities. “To your surprise, all of the houses which will be built by the city administration’s budget are for rent,” she said.
She remarked that it is true that the system was corrupted. A simple example is there are around one million registered house seekers. From this number around 600,000 of them are from other regions. For further information, around 75 percent of the current residents in those condos are not the ones who got the house primarily. The current residents are either bought the house or someone transferred it to them. This shows how the people of the city are suffered a lot form this maladministration. This time, however, they will be curious to solve those flaws and try to be fair to all the citizens.
Nowadays, the price inflation is one of the hardest challenges that the people are facing. Even though there have been different incentives from the government, the people couldn’t resist it.
The Deputy Mayor has also explained the challenges and possibilities towards price inflation. She said that in the current situation, there are two factors for the inflation. One is market determined inflation and the other is the man-made inflation. The former is hard to cope up because the international market determines the price of imported items. The only thing that the government can do is to levy the tax and sell it with the first price. The latter is made here in the country where people hide basic items from the people, and to make the market chain longer so that very few people can be benefited.
In order to manage this problem, as to the Mayor, the government has executed many decisions to shorten the chain and make accountable those who hide the items. The city administration has planned to build 17 small markets for basic items that people can easily get what they want and 3 big markets for international or imported items. This way, the chain will be shortened. Controlling the market in Addis Ababa is controlling the market in all regions of the country, so that the city administration is exerting its maximum effort to support the people, she stressed.
Deputy Mayor, Adanech added that the city administration will help the people to plant vegetables by using different technologies supplied by the government. We shouldn’t forget the 600,000 students who got fed by the government twice a day.
All in all, the city administration has been doing marvelous activities since it got the position. There are so many evidences that show the efforts exerted by the administration. The Mayor highlighted they keep pushing to the limit to make the city as its name and a model for the rest of the world.
BY DANIEL ALEMAYEHU
ETHIOPIAN HERALD 22 SEPTEMBER 2021
