Housing Enterprise shifts supply responsibility to contractors

The Addis Ababa Saving House Development Enterprise is tasking contractors with supplying materials except for steel bars and lifts.
This new procedures will begin next fiscal year on 8,428 condo houses to be constructed in Bole Arabssa. The contractors who win the tender to build the condos will bring cement, wood, electric lines and other materials. The new Bole Arabssa sites lie on 38 hectares and will have 40 buildings that will either be G+15 or G+13. According to the Enterprises the old procedure will still be applied on homes that are already in the process of being built.
Yohannaes Abayneh, the communication officer for the Enterprise told Capital that contractors should purchase 40 percent of their material supply from small and medium enterprises.
“It is less efficient for the Enterprise to buy materials and supervise their construction, so we have shifted our role to quality control for the condos. Our working procedure states that small and medium enterprises should play a role in the construction and contractors have an obligation to give 40 percent of the supply to the small and medium enterprises which has been supplying sand, bricks and grind stones”.
He added that the Enterprise is working to deliver 17,000 houses by September.
“We are trying our best but the hard currency shortage still affects our procurement but if things go well we will deliver the houses before the end of this Ethiopian year,” he said. According to Yohannes the Enterprise is also working to leave the finishing work to the beneficiaries which will include fixing of doors, windows, ceramic floors, kitchens and toilets.
The agency is spending more than 150,000 birr per house to install finishing materials and Capital understands that so far 90 percent of the recent 972 transferred houses have replaced the finishing materials, which means that the original work is wasted.
Currently over 38,000 40/60 condos are under construction in Gerji, Bole Bulebula, Hayat Meri and Summit and more than 139,000 people are on the waiting list for these houses.
For the current fiscal 6.5 billion birr has been approved for the 40/60 condo and 150 contractors and 10,000 small and medium enterprises are working on the construction sites of these homes.