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What wrecked the sanguinity of the Diaspora
participants at the meeting held last week was a
briefing by Kassa Hailu, general manager of Addis
Abeba Land Development and Administration, which
attested that no residential plots are available in
the city.
"Currently, we do not have available land for the
purpose of building residential houses and are not
in a position to entertain such requests as we have
already facilitated 150sqm of land for each member
of the 143 Diaspora who submitted their requests two
years ago," he stressed.
Around 2,700 Ethiopian Diaspora who formed housing
associations are to be granted 150sqm of land each
in the Bole District, of which 50sqm would be free
from lease payments. These prospective residents,
who reside across various parts of the world, have
organised themselves in 143 associations, each
having 10 to 32 people. However, the associations
are still undergoing inspections with the scepticism
that there could be non-Diaspora members.
"I will begin looking into other options as the
officials are not in a position to provide us with
plots," Hirut told Fortune.
There have been a series of meetings, including with
the government’s top brass and members of the
Diaspora right after the Millennium hoopla came to
the closing stages. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and
senior officials had a consultative meeting with
Diasporas, which mostly are considered affluent
among local residents.
However, what was witnessed in the meetings, has
bewildered residents as the Diaspora held their
mouths agape, desperate to hear what the authorities
had to say about coveted city plots
Bogalech Seyoum shares the weight of disappointment
experienced by Hirut, as the former too did not see
what she initially expected would come out of the
meeting she attended.
Having assumed that the whole idea of the meeting
would be about granting land to the Diaspora,
Bogalech went to the meeting before anyone else
turned up.
"As fast as it was born, the hope of getting land in
Addis Abeba and building a house to live with my
children has disappeared," Bogalech, who came from
Italy to celebrate the Millennium holiday, bemoans.
Like Hirut and Bogalech, other returnees were not in
a frame of mind to listen to the piece of advice
given to them by Mayor Brehane Deressa as the
Administration's stance on the land issue has
disappointed them.
A
former World Bank employee, Brehane, who lived in
the US for 34 years before he ended up Mayor,
somewhat assuaged the participants with his presence
just as the Prime Minister popped up in an identical
meeting two weeks ago at the Millennium Concert Hall
on Africa Avenue (Bole Road), where it was noticed
that the Diaspora was pushing and shoving each other
to get a good picture of him making use of a power
outage.
Brehane related to the crowd his untold experiences
before and after he became Mayor in a bid to
strengthen them to withstand the bureaucratic
circumstances surrounding the city.
His effort to build a brick fence for his mother's
house for which he sought permission from the Lafto
Nefas Silk District Office became futile, as he was
relentlessly striving to get the permission for
nearly one year in vain. Frustrated by the services
of the District's Office, Brehane had to relieve
himself from the hassle having assigned the
responsibility of fixing the problem to his elder
sister. However, the effort put up by his sister has
not brought the intended result either, he told the
gathering.
"This is a city whose basic infrastructure is built
suitably for 500,000 people but which accommodates
over four million residents crowded under the
limited infrastructure facilities," Brehane laments.
"The City Administration is also handcuffed by the
bureaucratic red tape."
Listening to the shortcomings of the inefficient
public service that he encountered at one point in
history in his personal capacity were Ethiopians of
foreign resident audiences who tucked in with
optimism of various sorts. He worryingly advised the
500 Diaspora gathered in the hall not to be
impatient and become frustrated by this
problem-prone city should the delay of services
occur.
"This is the hard fact with which we continue to
live as we strive to improve the situation about the
city steadily and markedly. Rather than complaining,
keep correcting the mistakes you see around in the
system of public services. There are many more
children deprived of basic education in the city; if
each one of you considers facilitating means for a
child to go to school, this city would be better
off," he reminded the gathering Diaspora.
The Administration is allegedly lurking in corrupt
service delivery with its employees making shady
deals with clients. On average, four officers from
each district were apprehended by the Federal Ethics
and Anticorruption Commission in the city.
"The panic among the rest of the staff in City Land
Administration has almost cripped the services,"
sources told Fortune.
Although most of the audience seemed to enjoy the
way the Mayor showed frankness in his narration and
descriptive expression of the situation, they stuck
to their pressing land issue. They challenged the
Mayor as to why their requests for land to invest
and building houses have not been addressed.
In response to these questions, Kassa Hailu, manager
of the Land Development Administration Authority
assured the Diaspora that land requested for
investment purposes would soon be resolved.
"The delay occurred due to the process with which
the original occupiers on the land must be
compensated," Kassa stated. "However, the land would
be granted to the developers as soon as the board
reviewed the requests."
The plots of land proposed to be handed over to the
Diaspora for residential housing units are found in
the CMC area of the Bole District. Those who
obtained the approval of the Authority have received
their title deed, however, they have not yet taken
the land and it is expected that within the next
three months they will take their plots from the
District Administration.
"Even though there would be no room in the City
Administration's possession to grant land in the
2007/08 fiscal year, after the study framed to
address the problem of allocation of land in the
city, we would be able to facilitate land for those
organised in groups or associations some time in the
future," Kassa asserted.
"The undergoing study on which basis allocation
would be made has taken into consideration the fact
that the city growth should be preferred to be
vertical," he added. Therefore, if the study would
be approved as intended, the arrangement to allocate
land would be made only for those organised in
groups and ready to build apartment units."
Just about to honour its 120th anniversary, Addis
Abeba encompasses 54,000hct, of which 30,000hct has
been utilised and the balance of which has been
preserved for expansion purposes under the master
plan.
Sources disclosed that there are over 30,000 illegal
houses built on part of the expansion area preserved
within the master plan. Moreover, the prime
locations in the city centre such as Arat Kilo,
Kazanches, Leghehar, Mercato and Piassa have been
preserved for potential developers; however, the
relocations of residents in these particular
localities have been the greatest challenge for city
officials.
This factor has been part of the major bottleneck
for the Lease Board to make decisions on land issues
advanced to the Office, sources disclosed.
"The fact that the City Administration made
everything about the land issue as clear as could be
understood would ease the volume of human traffic
coming to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA)
intent on getting land in the city," Demeke Atnafu,
expert on the Diaspora Directorate, told Fortune.
Formerly in the same shoes as many returnees, Mayor
Brehane understands the feeling involved on the part
of the Diaspora. Leaving the podium for Kassa to sit
among the attendees was a scene that showed how much
the Mayor desired to share the feeling of the
Diaspora during the meeting.
Though Kassa dwelled on the land issue, Brehane
tried to change the subject.
"I take advantage of this meeting with you to gain
better experience. I lived in the US for many years
and did not come back to Ethiopia with material
wealth; however, there was knowledge that I came
with. Let us make good use of every possible
occasion to enlighten our people," Brehane
manifested his charisma by narrating his journey to
become Mayor.
"I remembered that on my first day after assuming
office the guard at the gate refused to let me in,
but I managed to convince him to sneak me into my
office," Mayor Brehane recalls.
During the first three weeks, he told the gathering
that he had to wait until the office was made up.
"Once the office was ready, I stepped on wall to
wall carpet worth 20,000 Br while the janitor used a
simple sweeper to clean it up. When I suggested she
could use a vacuum cleaner she replied she did not
know what a vacuum cleaner was," he added.
"Even after I issued the order for the vacuum
cleaner to be bought, thre were many challenges and
zigzagging around the red tape, it was finally being
bought," he continued, hoping to clear the stress
among the participants of the meeting. "The strange
thing about it is that even after the vacuum cleaner
was bought, the janitor continued to use the
ordinary sweeper to clean the carpet claiming that
the vacuum spits water from the inside. I squeezed
myself sitting on the ground with the janitor to fix
the vacuum cleaner manifesting respect for the job
while leaving my mayoral duties," Brehane gripped
his audience with his tale.
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