Delivering tap water is the task of the city’s Water and Sewerage Authority. Because of the inability to meet resident’s demand for portable water; the Authority has begun rationing and delivers water by tankers to the mountainous part of the city. However, individuals and business institutions are forced to buy water from vendors and water tank truck owners even though distributing water is the sole right of the Authority. This may incur the business owners and the Authority personnel to vandalism by disrupting the rationing schedule.
The capital city Addis Ababa still has a long way to go when it comes to delivering potable water. The city water and sewerage Authority can only able to deliver below 75 percent of water demand for the estimated 5 million inhabitants in which most of them get through rationing.
The 132-year-old capital city, is only able to cover two-thirds of demand by supplying 575,000 cubic meters of portable water to its inhabitants on a daily basis.
Most residents of Addis Ababa are forced to walk far, up to 2km, to fetch water by themselves or they are charged more money by people, like Mentesnot Kassa to bring it to them. He carries yellow jerry cans that can be filled with 20 liters of water on his shoulders.
For Mentesnot, a shoe shine around Ferensay Legasion, the situation creates additional income for him. He charges customers 15 to 25 birr for a single jerry can depending on the distance traveled to deliver.
Business has been thriving since he began the task, so he bought a hand push cart with 5 thousand birr to deliver water to customers.
“The hand push cart helped me to deliver more water and save time in addition to increasing my income,” said Mentesnot. Residents and eateries are his biggest customers.
Birhanu Teklu, a public servant in his late 40’s lives in Yeka sub city. Birhanu who lives with his two children and wife in a rented house is one of his customers.
“I have been living in that area since I came to Addis Ababa some 11 years ago and water scarcity is a common phenomenon here,” he said.
“There are multiple problems raising two children, the ever increasing school fees, a price hikes in food items, etc. Above all the water scarcity is a big challenge,” he adds.
The problem with the water shortage is not only the cost it incurs. It is often unsanitary and not suitable for drinking or cooking because it is contaminated. Therefore, we buy bottled water for drinking, he said.
Such cases are common in Yeka, Gulele, and Kolfe Keraneo sub cities.
To combat the water shortage, the Authority will deliver water by tanker trucks to inhabitants via micro enterprises in the mountainous part of Addis Ababa.
The Addis Ababa Water and Sewerage Authority mentions several reasons for the shortage of potable water, the ever increasing demand of water, lack of appropriate maintenance, and shortage of hard currency to purchase spare parts, water pipe breakage due to ongoing road construction and the aging of pipes.
The authority mentions frequent power outages as another problem because it has deep wells that needs to be pumped. There are over 150 ground water wells in addition to the main sources of potable water in Legedadi, Gefersa and Akaki.
In the unreliable rationing schedule, some of the areas in Addis get water only once or twice a week.
“Inhabitants might not get water more than once a week if electric power shortage occurs at the sub-pumping stations,” said Nigues Desalegne, Communication Officer at the Authority.
The City Administration’s inability to meet the demand for clean water has opened business opportunities for water vendors and for those businesses who deliver water through tanker trucks. Still others are delivering tap water through tanker trucks to hotels, hospitals and construction sites.
They deliver tap water by tanker truck and charge them up to 1,000birr even though selling water by any means is illegal.
They are arguing that they are charging for transportation and service delivery.
We are not aware of these issues, said Nigues, however the Authority should focus on working to meet the demand of the city residents, mentioning the Ayata Fenta water well project with the capacity of producing 68,000 cubic meters a day, Legedadi phase 2 Water Well Supply Project is expected to generate 86,000 cubic meters of water a day and the Gerbi Water Project with 73,000 cubic meters generating capacity a day as efforts in pipe line to produce additional water supply.
Water shortage creates new businesses
Koracon wins 191m birr lawsuit over Gimb Gebeya
The Federal High Court’s 20th Civil Bench has given a final verdict in favor of Koracon Construction, which sued Gimb Gebeya Market SC, a company formed by traders at the prominent market location called Gimb Gebeya in Adama Town. The defendant will have to pay 110 million birr and interest and compensation for breaching a contract agreement.
The case was filed by Jibril Geresu, owner and General Manager of Koracon, in May 2017 at the Federal High Court Civil Bench when Gimb Gebeya failed to settle a payment. They had made several attempts to collect the money for building a market center at Gimb Gebeya, Adama Town.
According to the lawsuit a contract was signed in January 2014 for the phase II project, and again for the third phase project in July 2015.
Based on the agreement the second phase project cost 191.233 million birr including VAT, while the supplementary agreement which was signed in March 2016 added further work at a cost of 50.8 million birr including VAT.
According to court documents filed in May 2017 the total cost of the third phase was over 153.6 million birr including VAT.
When the project started however, the client wanted to pay under other terms than they agreed to. According to the deal, the project consultant, ETG Designers and Consultants plc, was supposed to approve any payment request.
“The consultant is responsible for evaluating the project and approving payment requests from the contractor,” the document explained.
The lawsuit reads that even though the company has submitted a payment request approved by the consultant in December 2015 for over 41.25 million birr and in March 2016 for the payment of close to 38.5 million birr for the second phase of the project the payment was not settled by the client.
At the same time the payment request for the project done on the third phase and approved by the consultant in May and August 2016 for the payment of 32.25 million birr and 11.2 million birr respectively, the defendant did not pay as the same as the previous payment request, according to the claim by the plaintiff.
The plaintiff stated that meanwhile it did not receive any payment it has settled the VAT payment for the government.
Even though the defendant was behind in its duty, the plaintiff borrowed from the bank and used the money that it secured from other sources to continue the project as per the initial contract agreement, according to the charge it filed.
The charge stated that the plaintiff wrote two letters in May and July 2016 asking to be paid in order to keep working but they never were.
Since May 2017 the case has been heard at the Civil Bench of the Higher Court until a final decision was handed down last Friday afternoon.
The court verdict indicated that the defendant should pay the 110 million birr to cover the cost of the project undertaken by the contractor and audited by the public enterprise, Ethiopian Construction Design and Supervision Works Corporation. The verdict will also include interest and compensation for the company besides the 110 million birr.
Gimb Gebeya SC is a company formed by about 400 traders that have businesses at the old market place at the heart of Adama town, 98km east of Addis Ababa, which was forcefully taken over by the city administration and transferred to investors.
The project owned by Gimb Gebeya SC is now located on the northern part of the town at a place called Minjare Street. Currently the market is one of the major trading centers in the town, while residents in the city claimed that the old place has not been developed properly.
Simpler water payments
The Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) and the Addis Ababa Water and Sewerage Authority (AAWSA) agreed to collect water bills for its 550 thousand customers through any of the CBE transaction mechanisms.
The agreement allows customers to pay without hassle and minimize additional cost, said Bacha Geni, president of CBE.
CBE and the Authority are working to finish connecting their networking systems before they start the service. The Authority is registering and clarifying customer’s documents.
“Rendering the services through CBE will make more satisfied customers and upgrade payment collection, said Zerihun Abate, Manager of AAWSA.
Delivering a digital payment system reduces cash flow risk and modernizes its service delivery, added Dereje Fufa, banking sector vice president.
Dogs to help sniff out smuggling
In an attempt to stop wild animal smuggling through Bole International Airport, The Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority (EWCA) plans to deploy four detection dogs.
The dogs will come from Holland and will be trained to sniff and to catch rhinoceros horns, pangolin scales and ivory tusks at the airport’s custom security gates.
EWCA signed a memorandum of understanding with the Airport Enterprise, Federal Police, Custom Office and Information Network Security Agency so they can work together to get the dogs here faster.
Sponsorship by the Africa Wildlife Conservation (AWF) made it possible to purchase the dogs. Six Ethiopians will be trained in Tanzania to handle the dogs.
Bole International Airport has been identified as a major transit hub for wildlife trafficking, which was clearly evidenced in the recent report of Wildlife Crime.
Between 2011 and 2015, more than 700 people were arrested in connection with illegal ivory trafficking. A majority of those arrested at BIA were transit passengers with a sizeable number of passengers picking Ethiopia as their first departure location. An analysis of the origins of the flights from which ivory and wildlife products were detected at BIA in Ethiopia shows that flights from Nigeria and Angola took the largest share 20.45 percent and 19 percent of arrests respectively followed by DR Congo 8.99 percent Equatorial Guinea 8.82 percent , Ghana 6 percent and Congo Brazzaville 5.5 percent. However, the origins of the ivory tusks are not known and therefore subject to speculation.
Daniel Pawlos, EWCA Wild Life Traffic Director told Capital that the sniffing dogs will help Ethiopia combat illegal wildlife trafficking.
“It is a shame to see such a huge volume of wildlife trafficking in our country, we have an institution to combat this so we need to do something and getting dogs that can sniff out wild animal parts is a first step,” Daniel told Capital that the cost has not yet been determined.
Elephants, lions, tigers and rhinoceros are targets of illegal hunting and trafficking in Ethiopia and the demand for lions’ bone for traditional medicine is exacerbating illegal lion hunting.
The illegal trade of wildlife is the fourth most lucrative black market in the world – worth around USD 20 billion a year and impacting more than 7,000 species of animals and plants. Criminal organizations involved in wildlife trafficking are often directly connected to other trafficking networks, including the smuggling of narcotics, arms and people and exploit the increasing connectivity of global air transportation to traffic the endangered species. The air cargo industry is one of the key aviation sectors acting to break the supply chain from source to consumer.
