Ministry of Water Irrigation and Energy appreciated the support of Citrus International Trading to humanitarian WASH response to the flood victims in Afar region. Citrus has been supplying water treatment for the past 13 years.
“As our previous effort to support the sector, we have been supplying Aquatabs for partners as donation for different emergencies in different times to be used for AWD outbreaks, flood emergency and drought response in different parts of the country through WASH Cluster partners,” the company said in a statement it sent to Capital.
“Currently our company is aware of the current Afar region flood emergency and has been following the situation. Hence, we would like to supply 100,000 Aquatabs through WASH cluster partners in response to the current emergency in Afar region,” it added.
“On behalf of WASH cluster and partners, we would highly appreciate this generous support by Citrus International Trading and their strong commitment to humanitarian causes,” Emergency WASH Task Force/ WASH Cluster Ethiopia, said.
Humanitarian WASH response to the flood victims in Afar
EHRC says authorities should promptly release Lidetu Ayalew
Authorities should promptly release Lidetu Ayalew and other detainees who have continued to be held in detention despite bail orders by courts, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said.
On September 22, a high court in East Shoa Zone, Oromia Region, granted Lidetu bail of 100,000 birr, but authorities are yet to implement the decision.
“The continued detentions of Lidetu and others in spite of bail grants reflect disregard for the rule of law and are violations of human rights,” said Daniel Bekele, EHRC’s chief commissioner.
EHRC says authorities should promptly release Lidetu Ayalew
Authorities should promptly release Lidetu Ayalew and other detainees who have continued to be held in detention despite bail orders by courts, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said.
On September 22, a high court in East Shoa Zone, Oromia Region, granted Lidetu bail of 100,000 birr, but authorities are yet to implement the decision.
“The continued detentions of Lidetu and others in spite of bail grants reflect disregard for the rule of law and are violations of human rights,” said Daniel Bekele, EHRC’s chief commissioner.
EthSwitch Enables POS Terminal Interoperability
EthSwitch S.C., Ethiopia’s National Switch, announced the commencement of interoperability of POS Terminals run by banks. The move enables payment card holders’ to purchase goods and services at merchant location using POS Terminals operated by any bank. The announcement came after National Bank of Ethiopia approved the full scale commercialization of POS Purchase service following months of pilot test involving participant banks.
POS Purchase interoperability is a mechanism to enable payment card holders pay for services and merchandise purchased at merchant locations using POS terminals of any bank through the interconnection protocols to authenticate, authorise and clearing of payments facilitated by Ethswitch. Ethswitch CEO, Yilebes Addis stated that “POS Purchase interoperability is significant steps in the modernization of payment system in Ethiopia, which will help banks efficiently utilize their expensive POS Terminals as it avoids the need to place several terminals in certain merchant location and use them in other location.” He also added that “payment card holders will have the convenience of paying with their card in many more merchant locations increasing the trend of using electronic payment methods.” Ethswitch works to make payments simple and affordable so that the significant shares of retail transactions are done using electronic methods.
Ethswitch previously has enabled interoperability of ATMs operated by all commercial banks resulting in millions of transactions worth billions of birr in value every month. In the month of August alone a total of 2.79 million transactions with a total value of 1.82 billion birr have been facilitated. It is to be recalled that Ethswitch has achieved PCI DSS Certification, the highest order of payment industry data security standard.
