The Pharmaceutical Fund and Supply Agency (PFSA) temporarily stopped supplying medicine to private pharmacies as of September 20, 2018. The Agency previously supplied medicine both to private and public health centers including private pharmacies.
PFSA conducted an investigation on how the medicine it distributes was being used and discovered that the way private pharmacies were conducting business went against what the agency intended, according to Public Relations Director, Adna Bere.
“There is no clear policy stating the Agency must supply medicine to private medical centers or pharmacies,” she said.
“We supplied medicine to private health centers because our charter allows us to circulate our resources after our costs are covered. However, we are seeing that the pharmacies are not working to help people access medication at a fair price, but instead are charging high prices.”
The research also revealed that most of the medicines purchased were sold to these pharmacies, instead of supplying them to public health centers and pharmacies.
Pharmacy owners Capital talked with expressed their concern that the decision will create shortages and inflation of items they usually buy from PFSA.
“I thought this was just the usual 20 day or so summertime pause,” said the owner of a private pharmacy.
The Agency has 19 branches all over the country after adding a second branch in Addis last year. It supplies medicine for 300 hospitals and 3,600 health governmental health centers.
“The ban is temporally and it will be removed,” said Adna.
The Agency did not say when the ban would be lifted.
Agency halts med supply to private pharmacies due to price gouging
We Are Many We Are One
Today the topic is tribalism.
It is not news to anyone that Ethiopia is being torn apart by ‘tribalism’…
250,000 years or so later people are still seduced by the idea that one group is “undeserving” and “evil” while our own group is “correct” and “good.” Not since the Zemene Mesafint (Era of the Princes) has Ethiopia been as polarized as it is today, where people seek comfort and security within their ethnic groupings – Amhara, Tigray, Oromo, whatever.
I always wondered if Oromo groups that seek to reinstall an Oromia state they can fully control can be labeled ‘tribal’; these groups definitely aspire to a form of dominion that would undo the current national order. Journalists and opinion makers, however, describe them out to represent a backward, irrelevant form of existence, while THEY seem to hold down the citadel of reason and progress. And yet, since the early twentieth century, those accused of Oromo tribalism have often been guilty only of trying to remain themselves, of resisting the encroaches of more powerful empires and ideologies, of preserving in beings.
What is dreadful is the type of tribalism that is narrow-minded, hopelessly obsolete, and serving the interests of a clique. What I would call the “Jawarists” discourse of ‘tribalism’: chauvinistic and mainly based on belligerence. The type of tribalism that brought us the Biafra war, the Rwanda genocide, the Burundi genocide of 1972 and 1988, many other civil wars, the endless tribal fighting in the Congo, the senseless xenophobic killings in South Africa, and of late the meaningless slaughters of innocents in various parts of our country. We should fight and reject such kind of tribalism!
The tested, centuries-old clans that are woven to form strong tribes can be adopted to build an Ethiopia of many interdependent tribes or nationalities. There is nothing wrong with ‘positive’ tribalism if it goes hand-in -hand with the universal values of constitutionalism, democracy, justice, transparency, equity and respect for each other. Indeed, most people, left on their own, have simple tribal hearts but they are not averse to other communities.
Yes, dear readers, it will take an inspired ruling party and leader, an imaginatively bold step to deal effectively with our ethnic challenges, and even more with our other much serious problems we seem to disregard: global warming, excessive population growth, water shortages, famine, desertification, Aids, poverty, growth of slums, and more.
Gov’t repossesses MIDROC land in Piassa, Mexico
Addis Ababa’s new Deputy Mayor, Takele Uma ordered the City Land Management Bureau to confiscate 11 fenced plots of land owned by MIDROC and put them into the land bank. Limited construction had been ongoing on those plots over the past two decades.
Included in this were three hectares of fended land in Piassa. Twenty years ago MIDROC agreed to build and 40 floor building in Piassa but changed their mind and decided to build two G+4 buildings.
The city had been criticized for allowing MIDROC to hold on to idle land for such a long time, and since they failed to start construction the government took the land and plans to re-sell it via tender.
The fenced land in Mexico Square was planned for a business building. Another plot next to the Sheraton Addis Hotel were taken away from MIDROC even though they had paid 87 million birr to relocate people who lived on that land. The company says they plan to appeal. In total MIDROC lost 250,413 square meters of land.
Capital asked Beyen Amdissa, Lease Land Supervision officer at the Land Management Bureau why land was taken from some investors when they had started digging holes for the foundation of their building. He responded by saying.
“We have put up with a lot so this is the right time to action. If a building has some columns and floors we can at least consider that there is some work going on there but a majority of the lands we took away are empty lands and buildings with stalk foundations.”
A week ago, Takele Uma told the press that they snatched 412 hectares of land from developers and out of it 138 hectares of land were given via a lease land tender. In total the city administration has placed 154 plots of land back into land banks.
The land bank also took over 95 pieces of land measuring 456,428sqm held by government institutions, as well as 11 other plots of land acquired by Ethio- Telecom, the Defense Minister and Federal Ministries measuring 2,743, 200sqm. Some of the repossessed land will be used to build condominium housing on the outskirts of the city. Currently the administration is auditing city buildings. If plots remain empty and construction doesn’t start in some areas the land will be returned to land banks.
MIDROC is owned by the billionaire Sheikh Mohammed Hussein al-Amoudi who is currently in custody in Saudi Arabia.
