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It was around 6:00p.m. in Tara Gedam, a small
village established adjacent to a nearby monastery
in Amahra Regional State, 654Km from Addis Abeba.
The only audible sound is the hum of the motor of
vehicles rushing on the newly constructed road
stretching from Bahir Dar to Gonder. Time seems
ticking slowly as life reflects the calmness of the
area.
For Dasash Alemu, a mother of six, life seemed
bounded by the routine daily activities. Preparation
of daily meals, including baking injera,
takes most of her time. Then there is collecting
wood and sometimes making tella, an in house
fermented traditional beverage. Once in a while, she
will go to Addis Zemen, a small rural town nine
kilometres from her village, to buy cereals for
family consumption for the three quintals of yield
she gets from her small plot of land could not
sustain to feed her for the whole year.
This is only a case when there are good weather
conditions and the countryside enjoys a bumper
harvest as she has seen over the past four years. If
nature turns its face, the yearly yield diminishes
to less than a quintal a year.
Dasash is single, after the father of her six
children, Legesse Woldemariam, disappeared a few
years ago.
"I do not know whether he is dead or alive," Dasash
told Fortune.
She, however, suspects that her husband was driven
away from his native land, abandoning her and his
children, due to destitution of the area; he could
have gone to Metema, a border area with Sudan,
seeking a better life.
For months after her husband's departure, Dasash
struggled to maintain the wellbeing of her children.
But it was too heavy a burden to bear to take care
of her hearing-impaired oldest daughter. It was
impossible to feed them from the yield she had got
from her land.
Thus, Dasash entered into an arrangement with a
farmer in her village, who ploughs the land and
equally shares the produces. She was grateful when a
young farmer asked her permission to tie the knot
with her second daughter, Mulu Legesse. Her
daughter's marriage brought about a major change in
her life.
With a contribution of some money from her, Dasash's
son-in-law built a house, which has separate double
rooms for his wife and her sister. Dasash was proud
to see a corrugated iron-roofed house adjacent to
her badly shaped hut.
However, life again took her down when her
hearing-impaired daughter bore two children out of
wedlock. The environmental degradation evident in
the area did not help to improve her situation, with
yields declining year after year. She had tried to
make it up selling tella once a week or
during holidays.
"I bought cereal for 30 Br and made 30 Br profit,"
she said. "But I spend the money to buy grains."
Such was her wretched life; she has been a
beneficiary of a region-wide programme designed by
the federal government deemed the Productive Safety
Net Programme (PSNP).
Shortly known as 'safety net', this is a programme
started three years ago in four regional states -
Oromia, South, Tigray and Amhara - in order to
provide assistance through work for food or cash.
Alarmed by the growing symptom of dependency
syndrome due to massive international food aid since
the great famine of the mid 1980s, the federal
government would like to see people in food insecure
areas do some work in order to be assisted.
Beneficiaries receive grain or cash after
participating in labour intensive public works or
after qualifying for the criteria to get direct
support.
The aim is to prevent asset reduction at rural
households and try to create assets at the community
level, according to a report from Food Security
Coordination Office of the federal government.
Old age, pregnancy, or terminal disease qualifies
one to be a direct beneficiary. Such beneficiaries
get three kilogrammes of wheat per head, daily.
Those who are working on public projects, such as
constructing roads, building terraces, maintaining
schools, clearing ditches or develop springs as well
as conserve the environment get paid six Birr a day.
Dasash is one of the 2.5 million people included in
this programme in the Amhara Regional State, where
30.5pc of the entire population is surveyed to be
living in abject poverty. On a national level, the
region represents 30pc of those who are classified
as food insecure in Ethiopia. There are 52 weredas
covered under this programme, although the number is
expected to increase to 64 in the coming Ethiopian
fiscal year, following an anticipated reshuffling of
wereda numbers in the region.
Soil infertility and erratic rainfall is part of the
normal woes of the region, while the high growth of
population compared to small land size held by
farmers exposed them to chronic food insecurity,
according to experts.
In order to support these people, the government
offers them choices whether they want to get aid in
kind or get paid cash, unlike before where anyone
participating in these projects used to be provided
grains and a jerry can of edible oil. It is the
weredas that decide whether the food insecure group
in their territory needs support in kind or in cash.
"Weredas can decide how much farmers need grain or
cash," said Asamenew Abebe, an expert at the State's
Food Security Coordination and Disaster Prevention
and Preparedness.
Yidnekachew Ewnetu is working as Food Security
Programmes Coordinator in the Agricultural and Rural
Development Office of Libo Kemkem Wereda. Out of the
29 kebeles in the wereda, 21 of them, including the
kebele where Dasash lives, Tara Gedam, are covered
by the safety net programme. Based on the request
from its weredas, the regional administration has
allocated 455.3 million Br and 1.2 million quintals
of grain this year, in order to assist direct
beneficiaries and those conducting public works in
1,168 kebeles.
Dasash was one of the nearly 40,000 people in her
wereda participating in the public works and was
paid in cash. It grew from 75pc coverage cash
payment last year.
"The in-kind support was stopped upon their
request," Yidnekachew told Fortune.
On a regional level, there are nearly 1.2 million
people receiving cash payments.
There is such desire for cash that the national
budget for safety net programmes significantly grew
over the past three years: from 600 million Br
during the first year, to 800 million Br and 1.3
billion Br last year. The largest portion of this
goes to the Amhara Regional State, followed by the
Oromia Regional State, although others such as Afar
and Somali regional states were included later on.
Ironically, no longer do farmers seem to be willing
to receive cash. Inflation in cereal prices -
increased nationally by an average of 16pc in the
past three months, according to the Central
Statistics Agency - made a daily wage of six Birr
too small to buy food for poor farmers.
"The money I receive from the authorities is not
enough to buy cereals," Dasash told Fortune.
Hers is not an isolated case.
Dessie Demissie, 50, a father of eight, has
travelled three hours on foot from his village, Libo,
to the Wereda town, Addis Zemen, to talk to
officials. His demand was clear. He wanted to
re-include one member of his family on the safety
net programme. Out of his eight children, he got
cash payment on the calculation of his six children.
His first son, Wasse, 30, who married in 2001, has
taken half of his small plot and his third son,
Walelign, 23, helps him farming. Both are excluded
from the programme.
For Dessie, excluding one member of a family means
losing 30 Br per month. The amount added up when the
three-month payment came at one time as it did
happen at the beginning of this week.
He went over to the local kebele office to get the
payment right; the officials told him that he can
only get paid for five of his children. After fierce
debate, he was advised to recheck with the Wereda
officials. Spending several hours in Libo Kemkem
Agricultural and Rural Development Office, he
returned with no result, unable to convince the
officials.
Dessie was sad when he left the compound. After what
happened on his land last June, every penny means
the world to him. As in the past, at the beginning
of every rainy season, he sows wheat, barley and
maize on his scattered and sloppy plot of land.
However, the heavy rain that pounded his area on
June 15 not only destroyed the seedlings, but also
badly eroded the soil.
Before suffering such environmental calamity and
entering into the safety net programme, Dessie was
one of the success stories of the extension
programme. He produced eight quintals of wheat, six
quintals of barely and six quintals of beans every
year. His yield has now decreased by half. During
the good old days, he also had two oxen, a cow, four
sheep and a donkey, which serve to transport his
produces to the market. Now, all this is gone.
"I lost everything," said Dessie.
It took three long years for Dessie to recover from
all his losses and start creating his own assets. He
has now borrowed 1,500 Br from the government and
spent 1,000 Br to buy four mother sheep and the rest
for the seedlings of onions, which is profitable on
the market compared to grains.
As soon as he thought he had made enough money
working on each safety net public project, the price
of cereals escalated in his area. His option is
limited only to sorghum.
"Now we can only buy sorghum that comes from Gojjam
and Welega," he said. "It is better than going
hungry."
The Food Security Coordination and Disaster
Prevention Office of the Regional State revealed, in
its second quarter report, the extent of the problem
and how inflation is not restricted the fixed income
urban group as authorities at the federal government
have claimed.
"The daily safety net wage cannot buy the expected
amount of food," the report declared. "When compared
to the first two years, currently, due to continued
increase in grain prices in most programme areas,
the number of weredas that prefer both cash and
grain have shown significant increase."
Some outspokenly asked local officials for the
return to assistance in kind, while others such as
Dasash just wish for it to happen.
For instance, there are now 2.1 million
beneficiaries in 52 weredas that are provided both
cash and grain (mixed resource support), as opposed
to 29 weredas a year ago. The 120,918 beneficiaries
in five weredas fully provided with cash as it has
been the case in Dasash's Tara Gedam Kebelle are no
longer interested to continue but move into provided
grain. This will indeed increase the 202,401
beneficiaries in seven weredas that get assistance
in a form of food.
Authorities have their own concern over this: the
larger the number of beneficiaries moved into
receiving grain, the greater is the pressure on the
national food reserve. Already the regional
administration has adjusted its demand for grain
from 215,872tn to 123,897tn this year "due to the
food shortage at the federal level". On the other
hand, the initial cash budget for the year has gone
up from 360.5 million Br to 454.3 million Br,
according to the second quarter report.
Paradoxically, not many farmers in Libo Kemkem
Wereda seem enthusiastic about having cash in their
pocket. Dasash certainly wants to receive grain and
cooking oil, fully aware that the six Birr a day
wage would not buy her any of that.
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