A letter written by the Agency for Civil Society Organizations issued this week says the media council can finally begin its work after three and half years of establishment. The first establishment conference was hosted by the United Nations on 12th January 2016 at the UN Conference Center.
The letter was issued and signed by Misrak Bezabh, Team Leader for Registration and Licensing of the Agency on June 25 stated that as per the Civic Society Organizations Proclamation no. 1113/2019, article 57 (1) the Media Council has obtained its license.
In its statement the Media Council recalled that for the past 42 months since its first general assembly the council was going through the process of obtaining the certificate from the government besides establishing the administration of the council.
During the council’s founding meeting, 19 founding members have signed on to the membership, now the members have increased to 29 which include public and private media outlets.
The council stated that it would work to improve media and follow media outlets to serve the public properly.
“Besides providing capacity building for journalists to keep the sector ethics, we will officially work to protect the sector from government intervention in press freedom,” the statement added.
Ethiopian Media Council secures license after long wait
Police get better radios
The Federal Police Commission replaced its analog system and is now using a new digital land mobile radio installed by Motorola Solutions.
The deployed ASTRO25 secure land mobile system covers Addis Ababa, making the federal police communication system more reliable.
The new digital system utilizes four installed microwaves in four areas of the city, can currently work within a radius of 100km but potentially it can work up to 800 km. The radios also have a long battery life.
The commission also plans to use the radios for text and video communications.
“We have to do our work with a better system, it can enable us to communicate with police staff more efficiently. Critical communication is a core component of police work,’’ said Commissioner Endsashew Tassew. Understanding the importance of a truly reliable and secure communications system led us to partner with Motorola Solutions.
Yuval Hanan, Esat Africa Region Manager for Motorala said; “We are proud to partner with the commission in their adoption of advanced digital secure mission critical to communication technology and this system allow interoperability with additional public safety.’’
Globally, the Land Mobile Radio (LMR) Market is expected to have significant growth over the forecast period. Emergence of push-to-talk over cellular systems and increasing demand for public security equipment are expected to be driving factors for the development of Land Mobile Radio Market over the next few years.
The Land Mobile Radio market is differentiated by type, technology, frequency, and end-users.
Motorola Solutions, Inc., JVCKenwood Corporation, Harris Corporation, Thales Group, and Hytera Communications Corporation Limited are the major five players operating in the global land mobile radio system market. Motorola Solutions, Inc. held the largest share among top five players with a share of 38.73%, in 2017, followed by JVCKenwood Corporation and Harris Corporation with respective shares of 12.17% and 10.65%.
Motorola Solutions, Inc. is an American data communications and telecommunications equipment provider that succeeded Motorola, Inc., following the spinoff of the mobile phone division into Motorola Mobility in 2011.
Light railway tariff to be uniform
The Addis Ababa Light Rail Transit (AALRT) plans to implement a uniform ticket price in August which the corporation believes will minimize mischief’s made by passengers.
Manager of AALRT, Muluken Assefa said that the controllers seize many passengers who pays nothing or pays the minimum fee to travel the whole route. The corporation also said that it collected over 800, 000 birr from penalties from those who by pass the law on the train.
The penalties range from 30 birr for paying the least ticket to travel long distance while 100 birr for traveling without having ticket.
The managers are now contemplating to start a flat fare payment system for a journey instead of different rates that was calculated on the distance.
The corporation will now make adjustment on ticket prices which will make the fee uniform for all distance.
Currently, Addis Ababa Light Rail Transit has 41 trams in its system. But only 34 of them are under operation while the remaining seven are out of service.
According to the manager, the difficulty of maintaining the trams locally hinders to make operational the entire tram on the track that have created burden on the quality of service delivery.
Luck of full fledged maintenance center forced the corporation to send few of the trams abroad for maintenance.
According to the ministry of Transport, Addis Ababa LRT is currently transporting at least 120,000 people per day and over 29 million commuters transported over the past nine months in which the corporation collected about 87.2 million birr revenue from the service.
But the total revenue collected from the daily passengers remains insufficient to sustain its activities as well as maintenance related works.
Muluken said on the problems related to repairing the trams and other challenges are hiking the cost of managing the LRT and requested the government to find a way to subsidize Addis Ababa’s light railways.
The Addis Ababa light railway was built by the China Railway Engineering Corporation (CREC) at a cost of USD 475 million, which 85 percent was covered by China’s Export-Import Bank.
Over 54,000 city government workers take part in BPR evaluation
The Addis Ababa City Public Service and Human Resource Development Bureau is evaluating 56 government institutions. So far they have assessed 54,000 employees and have assigned them to jobs based on merit.
Business Process Reengineering (BPR) will be the basis for assigning 36,000 additional workers over the next two weeks based on educational background, work experience and performance.
In the next round of the evaluation around 30,000 staff for medical service providers at hospitals, health stations and schools will be evaluated under the BPR.
Prior to the evaluation, the workers filled out a form and chose three positions they believed matched their skills. The bureau would try to give them their first choice but if that is not a possibility, they will be assigned to another role which is going to be determined by a technical committee formed by the government.
The BPR is based on Scientific Management, Systems Theory and Operations Management.
Melkau Temesgen Human Resource Inspection Director at the bureau told Capital that the new BPR is expected to enhance the efficiency of services in the city.
“BPR is not a onetime exercise, but is a continuous one. The requirement and feasibility of a business process reengineering, at present, exists for two reasons – one, the expectations of the stakeholders are rising day by day and secondly the changing technological environment permits the process improvements due to new inventions. Due to these changes, BPR is increasingly being seen as the answer to the challenges that the organizations, especially in service sector, face in delivering services more effectively and efficiently.”
“Though some improvement has been gained in enhancing service quality, there is still a mismatch between work and education quality. This is a challenge for us. So we applied BPR to solve it and streamline services.”
Capital asked Melkau what will happen to 13,000 project workers who are mostly engaged in engineering.
“It is still not decided but what I can tell you is that if the project contact workers are needed by the new re organized office they will continue their work and their fate will be decided by the respective institution who chooses which project work is most needed.’’
Around 16 years ago when Arkebe Oqubay was the mayor of the city BBR was implemented in Addis.
