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.
Light railway tariff to be uniform
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.
Oromiya Insurance unveils ambitious plans
Oromiya Insurance Share Company, one of the youngest insurers made plans to double their capital at the 7th annual meeting held at Hilton Addis Ababa.
Requests to buy additional shares from the shareholders, strengthening the financial capacity of the company to compete in the industry, and to begin the construction of the headquarters were also addressed at the meeting.
“We needed to double our capital in order to put the company at the top insurers and able to engage to invest on reliable investment opportunities in the country,” according to the board chairman of the company Abera Bekele.
According to the company, the major motive for doubling the capital is to begin the construction of the new headquarter, before the deadline given from the city land management office that will end in September.
“Scaling up the capital is mandatory as we can’t build the headquarter with the existing capital” adds Abi Sano Board member of the company.
The company has already secured 3004sqm of land in front of Wabi Shebelle Hotel to build its head quarters at a cost of 2.2 billion birr. The 35 story building is expected to be awarded to a contractor soon.
Though, the company took ten years to reach the current 250 million birr paid up capital, shareholders unanimously agreed to increase the capital to 500 million birr in a year.
Shareholders mandated that the board of directors decide on a timetable to sell new shares and give them a value based on Commercial Law Article 54.
Oromiya Insurance was established in 2009 by the major shareholders of Oromiya Cooperative Bank, Oromiya International Bank and Oromiya Coffee Farmers’ Cooperative Union and over 878 shareholders.
Enel likely to sign contract with EEP by the end of July
Enel green power, an Italian multinational firm hopes to sign the final contractual agreement with Ethiopian Electric Power to begin developing the Methara solar project by the end of next month.
Enel green power was awarded the Methara solar project back in 2017 as a preferred bidder with Orchid Business Group, a local Ethiopian infrastructure company, to build and operate a 100 MW photovoltaic (PV) capacity plant, in Methara area which is some 200 km east of the capital, Addis Ababa.
The company will be investing approximately 120 million USD to build the solar PV plant.
“It’s been a big delay for two years, but we are not surprised because it is the first project and the first one is always challenging,” said Antonio Cammesecra president of CEO of Enel Green Power.
The solar park will be supported by a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with EEP for all of the energy generated by the plant.
“The delay of the Methara project occurred due to technical evaluation, design and studies in connection with environmental impact assessment,” said Sileshi Bekele Minister of Water, Irrigation and Energy.
“Methara Solar Project will be the foundation as no other solar projects are installed so it will pave the way for getting experience, knowledge, technical skills and expertise,” Cammesecra added.
According to Energypedia.info Ethiopia receives a solar irradiation of 5000– 7000 Wh/m² according to region and season and thus has great potential for the use of solar energy. It offers tremendous opportunities to suppliers worldwide, having among the strongest solar resources in the world. In particular, the region offers excellent potential for concentrated solar power and concentrated photovoltaic systems.
Ethiopia has pipeline projects in solar generation as an alternative renewable resource. Ditcheto and Gad are expected to generate a combined capacity of 250MW.
According to the study conducted by RES4Africa foundation, Ethiopia has an installed capacity of generating 5300 MW only from solar energy resource by 2030.
Enel group is present over 30 countries worldwide and involves in distribution of natural gas apart from engaging in generation of renewable energy sources. It also conducts researches and explores the implication of global challenges in energy domain and invests around 700 million Euros in Africa and building 900 MW of wind and solar capacity as of 2019-2021 strategic plans.
Recently the government has awarded 12 solar energy development projects to three Chinese and one Spanish firm with an estimated cost of 10.3 million USD that will be distributed across the country.
The Ethiopian Government is expected to collect nearly 12,000 MW of new hydro, wind, geothermal and solar capacity in the second edition of GTP in partnership with the private sector, with the aim of meeting the country’s electrification needs while diversifying its generation mix in line with the government’s energy plan for the years up to 2020.
According to Cammesecera the company expects to finalize the project with a year to connect to the national grid.
