The International Rescue Committee (IRC) in consortia with People in Need (PIN) and Solidaridad through the IRC and European Union funding, launched a job matching application portal ModjoJobs in Modjo town. The platform is set to target 4000 unemployed youth, women, and girls;
10 Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) within the leather sector; service providers (TVET, PES, Job centers) and their staff, and 8 tanneries in Modjo and nearby communities. The new platform services as one of the activities under “Green JOBs in the Leather Sector in Modjo’’
The Job portal will support woreda job centers’ (One Stop Service Centers (OSSCs), Public, Employment Services (PESs) and Private sector agents) and capacities linking job-seeking youth to private sector employment opportunities. Through the project, the IRC installed infrastructure including IT equipment and WiFi at the one-stop center.
The project works towards the overall objective of strength
ening social cohesion, by supporting local economic and social development initiatives, especially for women and youth living in the Modjo area; and enhancing industrial and labor relations in the Modjo Leather City (MLC).
During the launching ceremony, the IRC Adama field office Coordinator, Lemmesa Shiferaw started that “unemployment is one of the significant problems of the country. The IRC with its partners is doing different activities to create green job opportunities in Modjo town and surrounding areas by focusing on those affected by the waste products from Modjo leather factories. This includes establishing, training, and providing financial support for 20 Village based loan and saving associations ( VSAL) for women, facilitating “learn to earn” training through a Youth leadership program for 2500 youths, promoting Job creation opportunities mainly for youths and women, promotion of Corporate social responsibilities by creating of good social cohesion among the community, campaniles, and government, capacity building for key government sectors, community, and stakeholders”.
Mojo city vice Mayor Tsegaye Teklehana also said “Modjo city would like to thank the EU, the IRC, and its partners for their contributions in capacitating the government offices mainly One Stop Service center
s, TVET, and children and women affairs office. This project has been supporting the government’s big commitment to work on job creation mainly for youths advancing the service from manual to digital. This portal will have high benefits for the community, companies, and government in simplifying the data management of the Job and employment creation sector.”
Sisay Sime, Head of Modjo Job Creation and Skill Development Office also said “Since the implementation of this program, the youth’s attitude towards work has changed. Before, employment services for youth and women were very limited due to the low capacity of government and woreda-level offices to link them with economic opportunities. This application, the Job Matching Application (JMAP) Portal called ModjoJobs supports Modjo town and nearby communities, private companies, public Employment Service (PES) providers, and One Stop Service Centers). As Modjo Job Creation and Skill Development office, we will utilize the app to improve the existing service of One Stop Service Centers. Thank you for the great work on the project.”
IRC launch job-matching application portal
EU injects €33 million to restore education in Ethiopia’s conflict stricken areas
The European Union (EU), through its partnership with UNICEF and the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), grants €33 million to restore essential education services and implement school feeding programs in order for children living in conflict-affected areas in Ethiopia to get back to learning. This comes in light of 10 conflict affected regions where over 8,500 schools have either been partially damaged or destroyed, in addition to over 1,500 non-functional schools in Northern Ethiopia.
Roland Kobia, Ambassador of the European Union to Ethiopia whilst highlighting how this grant was vital, said, “Children are the innocent victims in any war and often suffer the most. Their lives are disrupted, and their education is interrupted. Overall, nearly two million children are out of school due to conflict across the country.”
“All of our member states welcomed the peace agreement between the two parties and we hope for the full implementation of these agreements,” said Kobia whilst talking about the situation in Ethiopia, adding, “this is the first step to peace and as the situation is still not possible for the full mobilization of aid.”
Overall, this support will benefit nearly 80,000 children and 60 schools will be reconstructed or rehabilitated. Meanwhile, the EU’s support to WFP will enable them to provide nutritious school meals to 50,000 children in schools across conflict-affected Northern Ethiopia. The education component implemented by UNICEF, will include the rehabilitation of schools, reduce rates of school dropouts and also scale-up the ‘My Home-Bete’ approach.
“We are deeply grateful for this generous contribution from the EU,” said Gianfranco Rotigliano, UNICEF Representative in Ethiopia, adding, “Millions of children’s are out of schools. If we are to prevent a lost generation, we need to act now and get children, especially girls, not only back in school but provide services to help them recover from the trauma they have endured due to conflict and also teach life skills in the process. In the northern part things are changing and activities seem to restart in some place so we have to think on how to bring children to school.”
The funding will also support WFP to provide nutritious school meals to 50,000 children across conflict-affected Northern Ethiopia. WFP’s school meals will ensure that conflict-affected school-age girls and boys (including IDPs) continue to receive access to food,
which will in turn attract children to enroll in school and continue their education. Evidence demonstrates that school meals contribute to the protection of children from child labor, particularly for boys, and child marriages, particularly for girls.
“I welcome the EU’s timely contribution to WFP’s school meals to keep children, especially girls, in school, who have been affected by the conflict in Northern Ethiopia,” said Claude Jibidar, WFP Ethiopia Country Director and Representative.
Sugar Corp requests bidders to extend price validity
The Ethiopian Sugar Industry Group requests bidders to extend the price validity for additional days.
A couple of weeks ago, the Group had invited international companies on a restricted bid to procure 200,000 metric tons of sugar to fill the market gap.
As per the bid-float which was opened on November 8, three companies; Osirius Group, Agrocorp International and ED and F MAN have come up with their technical and financial documents.
According to information that Capital obtained from reliable sources, all three companies have passed the technical evaluation, while the financial documents have been opened but not disclosed, as of yet.
On the price extension request letter that was issued early this week, the Group states that, “Due to some technical matters, we couldn’t finalize the process and declare the winner of the tender.”
The Sugar Industry Group has requested the companies to extend their price validity for a week up to Tuesday November 29.
Originally, the price validity was ten days, while the Group has put forth further days to conclude the financial evaluation and select the winner.
The latest bid came about as a result of South African company, Millhouse International, failing to come up with a performance bond, after getting the node for its competitive price points.
In the past bid as per its financial offer, with three letters of credit (LC) modality, Millhouse, a company from South Africa, offered LC at sight FOB USD 450 per ton and CFR USD 480, LC for 12 months USD 522 and USD 552 on FOB and CFR shipment modalities respectively. While for 18 months payment modality, it offered USD 561 and USD 591 of FOB and CFR respectively. Due to its lower bid in contrast to the rest, the company was awarded the bid.
Millhouse rates had wide gaps compared to the other bidders. For instance, Osirius and ED and F Man offer was FOB USD 545 and UDS 715 for LC at sight respectively. For the new bid, the Industry Group invited interested bidders to come up with three alternative payment modality; LC at sight, and 12 and 24 months differed payments.
Experts suggested that the relevant body should be cautious with regards to new companies that do not have any track record in Ethiopia.
At the current stage, experts have expressed their concern over price increments which are normally observed in the global market that might hike the procurement value if the procurement process takes more days.
About promises
Think about it for a minute. Who do you really trust? Maybe a friend or a colleague, your husband or wife, your boss, a worker? Any of these people maybe somebody you really trust, which means that you have confidence in that person. You are confident that that person will keep his or her promises and is capable of doing what you have agreed will be done. Then again, any of these persons maybe somebody you don’t trust, meaning you don’t have the confidence that this person will keep his or her promises or is capable of doing something you need that person to do for you. Trust is something which grows as promises are kept and the goods are delivered. On the other hand, trust can easily be violated and lost in the process. This is true in personal relationships, be it family, social or work relationships, and it is also true for companies, which have established a certain reputation in the market. Customers buy products of a certain brand because they are confident that what they get is good value for money and they trust that the services of that particular company are good. Many passengers have more confidence in some airlines than others, depending on the track records of those airlines.
Whether somebody performs satisfactory in your opinion or simply lets you down depends basically on two factors:
Is that person capable of doing what you expect him or her to do?
Is that person willing to do what you expect him or her to do?
Now, there are severable possible combinations of the “Can” and “Will” factors, which are matched in the table below:
| Will | Will not | |
| Can | I | II |
| Cannot | III | IV |
Quadrant I = This person can and will do what is expected.
Quadrant II = This person can but doesn’t want to do what is expected.
Quadrant III = This person has the will but is not capable of doing what is expected.
Quadrant IV = This person cannot and will not do what is expected.
Reasons why a person is capable of doing something depend on certain factors like knowledge, skills, and experience. Things can be learnt. It is more complicated with the “will” factor though as this relates to motivation. Many theories have been developed about how to best motivate people to perform but I still haven’t found out how best to motivate workers in Ethiopia. That is a topic for another article, however.
Let us instead have a closer look at the kind of people we deal with everyday and see how they affect the extent of confidence we would have in them.
Quadrant I persons can easily be trusted. We know that they are capable, and we know or will soon find out that they will do their best to do the job. We can have full confidence in them and our confidence in them grows fast, keeping pace with their track record. The problem is they are not the majority of the people we deal with. Quadrant IV persons don’t give much of a problem either as we should know they cannot do the job and they don’t even want to do it. If hired, they will not last long before being found out.
The problems we face though are with the quadrant II and III persons. In quadrant II we deal with people who can do the job but will most likely not do it to the best of their ability or complete it if they even started it in the first place. They are a major source of stress and disappointment as we have to keep chasing them or as we find out that the results of what they are capable of turns out to be of low quality after all. These are the consultants that disappear after they delivered their draft report and received their second pay check out of three. These are also the experts, designers and technicians who take advantage of the ignorance of their client and get away with highly paid services that don’t meet required standards by far. They are opportunists and prey on the ignorant during times of scarcity. They cannot be trusted but the client only finds out when it is already too late, when the damage is done and when the payment is made. It is especially disappointing to meet quadrant II persons in certain professions where trust is so important exactly because the client depends on their expert knowledge and skills. Ethical conduct comes in here I suppose.
Finally, we have the Quadrant III people who are willing to work but don’t have the capacity to do the job well. No shortage of them at all and causing frustration all around as what they do is simply not good and a waste of money and time. What they make is not according to standard and more often than not the job needs to be done all over again. The vast numbers of quadrant III people that we come across in all sorts of work lead me to my continued appeal for the need for massive expansion of education and vocational training in this country. After all, things can be learnt.
And so, we cannot trust people blindly and always expect good results, much as we would want to. But trust grows quickly as promises are kept. Can you be trusted?
Ton Haverkort
