The Addis Ababa Education Bureau which supervises private schools to Capital it has closed 59 schools due to violations like unqualified teachers, not having a library, laboratory, sport fields, or unsanitary toilets and dilapidated sleeping areas for children.
Thirty four of the closed schools are kindergartens, 14 primary schools and nine are high schools. Four high schools received a final warning and will have to be evaluated at the end of this fiscal year in order to continue operating.
Last year the Bureau revoked licenses for 35 schools.
The Bureau found that the school owners were more interested in making money than maintaining standards in schools.
Students from these schools were advised to enroll elsewhere before the start of the school year, which began last week.
Primary and High Schools are supposed to have a standard classroom and a sports field where kids can play basketball and volleyball. The KG must have a neat and a comfortable teaching classroom and sleeping room for the children.
Fikerte Abera, Deputy Director of Education Relevance and Quality at the Bureau told Capital that the supervision was performed with a strict checklist and the schools are being closed to improve the quality of education.
She added that although private schools are contributing to the educational development of the state, they must operate within the law.
She said that the government took action after several warnings by the inspectorate unit of the Bureau for the proprietors meet the set standards
“The decision to embark on the closure of poor schools across our capital city is a deliberate step towards improving the standards of quality education in Addis, we will not tolerate schools operating without a laboratory, toilet and library,” she said.
Fikerte said the schools also failed to scale through the verification carried out by the task force set up by the Bureau. She said that supervision will be a continuous exercise and any school that fails to meet the requirements at any point will be shut down, until such school does what is expected.
Currently 1,631 private schools are operating in Addis Ababa among these 919 are Kindergartens, 569 primary schools and 143 high schools.
Fifty nine schools closed for poor facilities, unqualified teachers
Ethiopian tax experts form new association
Ethiopian Tax experts gathered to form an Association to develop the field and to solve the problems of improper tax management in the nation. Former ERCA employees, academicians, tax lawyers, and auditors will be members.
The association is in the final stages of finalizing an articles and memorandums of the association which should be finished in a month.
Yohannes Woldegbrel, a well-known tax lawyer, is among the committee members working on the association and he believes lack of knowledge and experience affects tax revenue.
“The ERCA has a high retention rate and but lack of skills has become a major point of contention,” he said. “We want to be part of the solution, he added.”
The Association may take over some monitoring responsibilities in the form of a delegation.
Yohannes hopes the new tax agency directive will be approved. This way they will be able to help tax payers with more issues and provide better services.
“We are also planning to advise the authority as many respected professionals are members,” he said.
About 60 tax professionals attended the summit held at Jupiter hotel.
Government looks at India Eye Center takeover
Zewditu Memorial Hospital is in talks with the Indian’s Overseas Infrastructure Alliance (OIA) to purchase the India Eye Care Centre which has been closed for the last two years because of violations. The eye care center which consumed USD 2.5 million to build and install machines, opened in March 2014 inside the compound of Zewditu Hospital. However, it was soon closed when the government discovered the center was charging high fees when it was supposed to provide subsidized services for the poor. Zelalaem Chemdisa, CEO of Zewditu Memorial Hospital told Capital that they plan give OIA money so they can own the center.
“It is painful to see the center closed and lack of services. We are willing to help compensate OIA for the money they put into the center and we have gotten a positive response. It everything works out we hope to reopen the center.”
The center which has 15 bed dedicated state of the art and ultra-modern Ophthalmology facility Center was built to offer relief to patients suffering from conditions such as cataracts, glaucoma, diabetes related eye problems and plastic surgery around the eyes. The facility also has an in-house training center for surgeons, paramedics and administrative staff to improve local human resources and was built in technical collaboration with an Indian center of excellence which provides medical advisory and consultancy services.
OIA had planned to treat 100,000 patients and perform 10,000 sight restoring surgeries at the Center in about three years and also planed to introduce Mobile Eye Care Clinics in the remote areas.
Overseas Infrastructure Alliance (OIA) is a project development and management company with offices in India, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Republic of Congo, Burkina Faso, Rwanda, Sudan and Maldives.
Over 285 million people around the world suffer from visual impairments, and over 80% of their suffering is easily avoidable.
According to the Vision2020 report, it is a little known fact that 90% of visually impaired people live in low- and middle-income countries, over two-thirds are women, and 65% are over 50. This is primarily because they lack access to optical help, with some countries having less than one ophthalmologist per million people. The lack of access to eye care services is leading to blindness, caused by avoidable or curable conditions.
Indian sugar arrives to supplement market
The first batch of 200,000 metric tons of sugar to stabilize the market arrived at port of Djibouti.
The sweet, which severs as an input for some of industries, has been aggressively imported in the past budget year while new sugar factories are undergoing construction and some of the existing ones delayed production due to political instability.
The sugar was purchased late last year to help stabilize the market while sugar factories are undergoing maintenance was awarded by the Sugar Corporation, who is the sole producer and buyer of sugar.
Initially the company from Nigeria Feoni Consortium Limited won the bid to supply sugar at the rate of USD 414 per ton with CIF Djibouti, but the company disappeared and was unable to settle the 10 percent bid bond.
Accordingly the Corporation has awarded the supply to the second winner to supply sugar at the rate that Feoni Consortium Limited offered. Agrocorp International, a Singaporean company, has agreed to deliver the product.
According to the information that Capital obtained from the Sugar Corp., the first batch, which is 25,000 metric tons of sugar, transported via Ethiopian Shipping and Logistics Services Enterprise has arrived at Djibouti. The product will be fully transported until December this year.
Sources said that the product was purchased in India.
So far the corporation has not stated that it has a plan to buy more sugar this budget year.
Recently, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) stated that some of the delayed sugar plants will commence production within six months. Sources said that Omo Kuraz III, which is one of the new factories constructed by the Chinese company COMPLANT, is one of the factories that would be operational in the near future. COMPLANT has also finalized the projects at Omo Kuraz II and Kessem.
The maximum production in the history of the corporation was 4 million quintals per annum in the 2015/16 budget year. Two years ago the annual production was 4.5 million quintals. According to the survey conducted by the Sugar Corporation the current demand is from 6 to 6.5 million quintals per annum.
Due to the gap between the demand and actual local production the corporation has imported 200,000 metric tons of sugar per annum, while last budget year imports significantly increased.
The sugar shortage is not new to the country. For the past several years the government has allocated millions of USD to import the sweet.
In the beginning of the past Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP I), which started in 2010 and ended in 2015, the government announced the commencement of ten sugar factory projects that were expected to be finalized before the end of the five year period. Hopes are that the new sugar factories will allow the country to halt sugar imports and enable it to earn more than USD 600 million from exports by the end of the first GTP.
However almost all of them have been delayed beyond the scheduled time and the country continues to allocate scarce hard currency to import the product, which is also source of input for several industries. Every month the corporation supplies 600,000 quintals of sugar to the local market and manufacturing industry.
In the beginning of the past Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP I), which started in 2010 and ended in 2015, the government announced the commencement of ten sugar factory projects that were expected to be finalized before the end of the five year period. Hopes are that the new sugar factories will allow the country to halt sugar imports and enable it to earn more than USD 600 million from exports by the end of the first GTP.
However almost all of them have been delayed beyond the scheduled time and the country continues to allocate scarce hard currency to import the product, which is also source of input for several industries. Every month the corporation supplies 600,000 million quintals of sugar to the local market and manufacturing industry.
