A group of people who has saved their 40/60 condo payments has formed a committee and  suing  Commercial Bank of Ethiopia  who is on the verge  to transfer   18,000  condo houses to the   be   beneficiaries  .

The sue l also include Addis Ababa Savings & Houses Development Enterprise and Ministry of Urban Development and Construction.

The plaintiffs who are comprised from more than 100 people brought their case to  Federal Instant Court Ledta Division  last Wednesday and  asked the court to suspend the transferring of the houses and  to redraw the  lottery which will give priority for the people who saved 100 percent of t total amount of the houses and the court  is expected to  give   adjournment  very soon. . A total of 24,000 people paid the full amount and only about 3,000 were lucky to get the house.

The condos were drawn by   the Addis Ababa Saving House Development Enterprise who build the houses.

The plaintiffs are gathering video, audio and print evidence for their lawsuit saying that the Enterprise should have not given the same chance to people who had saved less money than they did.

Earlier during the lottery draw Takel Uma, Vice Mayor of Addis Ababa announced that people who saved 40 percent of the total amount of the house would be included in the draw. As a result, the recent drawing included everyone who saved over 40 percent of the house price.

Admasu Kassa  ,committee representative told Capital they are suing to the have the lottery done over.

“During the previous condo lotteries people who saved 100% percent of the home price got priority and the administration promised to do the same kind of thing for consecutive draws but they did not” ,he said.

More than 21,000 people were included in the recent draw and over 10,000 of them saved the full amount of the house.

When the 972 houses were delivered two years ago, the Enterprise raised the condo price from 3,200, birr to 4,918 birr per square meter. This meant that a 124sqm two bedroom would cost 609.8 thousand birr, and a 150sqm three bedroom 737.7 thousand birr and a 168sqm four bedroom 826.2 thousand birr.

CBE told winners to add the interest rate price from the previous increased price which meant that two bedroom buyers had to pay 701,270 birr while the two and three bedroom winners had to pay 847,650 birr and 950,000 birr respectively.

Currently, there are 20,000 40/60 and and 100, 000 condominium units that are under construction at different sites. However, due to poor capacity of contractors and consultants, and inadequate government supervision, most of the projects are behind schedule

In the past 25 years the Addis Ababa City Administration delivered 180,000 houses to beneficiaries but now close to a million people are on the waiting list for condo houses and have saved more than 10 billion birr at the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia.