BY TEWODROS KASSA
Following the provocative acts and the gruesome attacks that the terrorist Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF) has incited on various parts of the Amhara and Afar states, thousands of people have been killed, many injured and millions have been compelled to flee their living areas. Vital infrastructures and facilities have also been partially or fully destroyed.
The enterprise, while it had stayed in power for the last close to three decades, it had been orchestrating systematic prejudices against the people of Ethiopia and promoting divisive and antagonistic ideology to create hostility, fuel ethnic strife between and among other Ethiopians thereby to remain in power.
While it was in power, the group highly exploited the country’s resources, looted heritages, and smuggled trillions Birr to its associates abroad. Not only that, it has also immersed the country into a serious debt crisis, corruption and absolute poverty. It carried out massive economic damages by controlling the political power and monopolizing the economy.
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), terrorists not only exact a direct human cost, they can cause innumerable economic problems too. The effects of terrorism can be terrifyingly direct. People are kidnapped or killed. Pipelines are sabotaged. Bombers strike markets, buses, and restaurants with devastating effect. But terrorism inflicts more than human casualties and material losses. It can also cause serious indirect harm to countries and economies by increasing the costs of economic transactions.
The economic burden of terrorism can take myriad forms. National income losses and growth-retarding effects, disrupting production, scarring off investors or dampened foreign direct investment, and disparate effects on international trade, among others are the direct and indirect impacts of terrorism on the economy.
The terrorist TPLF group had been creating economic sabotage against the country since its inception in the 1970s. Currently, the remnants of the terrorist group, activists, and its apologists at home and abroad are attempting to sabotage the Ethiopian economy aimed at distressing the one hundred million plus population, creating havoc and disintegrating the motherland, which is of course absurd and unrealistic in any case.
Since the past one year, the terrorist TPLF remnants are engaged in damaging schools, Universities, hospitals, roads and other infrastructures like electricity and telecom lines in Amhara, Afar, and Tigray states aimed at isolating the Tigray people from the Ethiopian government, by doing so to serve their egocentric interest.
To this end, members of the terrorist group, activists, and sympathizers are intentionally disseminating fake information about the damaged infrastructure to confuse the Tigray people and the international community.
Recently, the University of Woldiya that has been badly damaged by the terrorist TPLF group announced that it is working day and night to complete the rebuilding activities that has been demolished by the terrorist TPLF within the coming two years.
Woldiya University President Abebe Girma (PhD) told the Ethiopian Press Agency (EPA) that the terrorist TPLF group intentionally inflicted heavy destruction on the University.
The group destroyed almost all laboratories, classrooms, dormitories, cafes, health centres and other facilities and the University’s infrastructure to obstruct it from carrying out its normal activities, he added.
“Realizing the ill intents of the faction, rebuilding activities have been commenced immediately- to resume the services that the University used to provide,” he said.
The University is undertaking the reconstruction works in three phases; and it is now welcoming its students to continue its teaching and learning process in the first phase. The first phase had a target of making students’ cafes, classrooms, dormitories, health facilities and other facilities in the University operational. And it was enabled to attain the targets successfully.
Accordingly, the Ministry of Education (MoE) has been instrumental in making the first phase a reality, with the support of nine public Universities. By giving positive response to the call of MoE, Wolaita Sodo, Arba Minch, Dilla, Werabe, Wachamo, Mizan Tepi, Jinka, Haromaya Universities, as well as Addis Ababa Science and Technology University have covered over fifty percent of the first phase of the rebuilding works by providing materials from spoons to heavy machine. In addition, other organizations have supported the University to commence its services swiftly.
However, the coordinated engagement of local and international non-governmental organizations is fundamental to fully recover and refurbish the University and to complete the ongoing reconstruction works very soon.
In doing so, the second and third phases of the reconstruction works are expected to be completed within the upcoming two years. Meanwhile, the Ministry of education has been working strenuously to rehabilitate the damaged Universities and education centres.
Recently, the Minister of Education, Prof. Berhanu Nega announced that there are different international development partners that show integrity with the Ethiopian government to rehabilitate education centers.
Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is one of the international development partners that have expressed their willingness to support the efforts – to rebuild destroyed schools in Ethiopia.
Prof. Berhanu, held talks with Katsuki Morihira (PhD), Special Representative of the Chairperson of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The Minister thanked the Agency for its support to Ethiopia in the field of education and called on it to backing the efforts in rebuilding the destroyed schools. Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Ethiopia Representative Katsuki Morihira (PhD) said more than 290 million USD was provided from 2006 to 2020 and more than 80 schools were built. He assured that his institution would support the construction of schools that were destroyed during the war, adding that they would provide the necessary laboratory resources and materials to the schools in terms of math and science education.
From 2003 to 2021, the Japan International Cooperation Agency has been providing technical and financial support to various projects in the education sector in Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian Herald march 27/2022
