The Addis Ababa City Administration which is in the final stages of restructuring its human resources based on its new Business Process Reengineering (BPR), still undecided if they will keep project office workers.
They have been working in various Kaizen, environmental and planning project offices. Recently, the City Vice Mayor announced that a majority of the projects would merge into existing institutions.
A source in the administration told Capital that the city cabinet would hold a meeting to decide the worker’s fate.
“Most of the project office workers where hired on a contract basis so if they are suited for the new structure they can continue but if not we will let them go. The cabinet will offer recommendations in a few weeks.”
The sources added that the BPR study on teachers and health workers will soon be launched.
BPR was targeted after the restructuring which streamlined 117 institutions to 68.
Currently the administration has 109,000 workers. BPR will give them a new job based on their educational status and work experience.
For the last four months the city has implemented a hiring freeze. According to the source new jobs will be posted after the BPR is implemented in the administration.
Seven years ago, Mayor Kuama Demeksa introduced BPR and restructured the jobs of city workers.
Since 1994, the government of Ethiopia has embarked on reforming its civil service organizations with the objective of improving the public sector service delivery system. The government sponsored a lot of management training programs to enhance the capacities of civil service employees and to implement Result Based Performance Management System in all of its civil service organizations. Though this brought some improvements in the performance of some civil service organizations, the effort required was too much as compared to the benefits obtained. Since 2004, the government has also endorsed Business Process Reengineering (BPR) as a foundation for strengthening Result Based Performance Management System in the Civil Service. Scientific Management, Systems Theory and Operations Management are the theoretical and methodological foundations of BPR. For this reason, most corporations used BPR as transformation tool during the 1980s and 1990s. However, the characteristics of government organizations are different from corporate organizations. These distinguishing features constrain government organizations from emulating the BPR experiences of corporate ones.
Fate of 13,000 project offices workers still undecided
Binding Tariff Information underutilized in Ethiopia
A year ago, Ethiopia implemented a system, used by the EU, known as Binding Tariff Information (BTI). However, importers have found it difficult to use.
BTI helps identify the correct classification of tariffs (taxes on imports or exports) for the goods a company intends to export or import. All BTI’s issued by national customs authorities are held in the European Binding Tariff Information database. BTI also provides assurance that goods have the correct commodity code (an eight-digit number for exports outside the EU or ten-digit for imports from outside the EU), if you know the commodity code you can look up other important information like duty rates or import export restrictions. It also shows what the total tariff will be. BTI is also used by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and in many other countries because it avoids delays at customs gates. For these reasons BTI is crucial for making business decisions. It allows an importer to decide if the commodity will be sold and what the final price would be after adding tariff costs.
Ethiopia uses a Tariff Book. It was launched in 2012 by the World Customs Organization (WCO). The WCO uses Harmonized System Codes (HS Codes) to unify the classification of goods. Items are classified in six digit numbers recognized by countries that have adopted the harmonized system.
However, if the item is not listed in the Tariff Book it creates a problem. This often occurs if the item is a new product. Customs Officers have to use verified information to determine the Cost, Insurance and Freight (CIF) of an item.
The government is still working on adopting the latest HS codes issued by the WCO in 2017. In general, it takes countries a year to accomplish this. A team in the Ministry of Finance is working with the Customs Commission and other stakeholders to prepare the Tariff Book. It is expected to be finished in a month.
On April 1, 2017, a directive was signed by Kebede Chane who led the former Ethiopian Revenue and Customs Authority (ERCA). It said that the customs commission had 30 days to respond to requests from importers.
Importers felt that this was too much time.
“We responded in an average of ten days because there were not that many requests last year, and now that we have established a new team it will take even less time,” Getu Legesse, who leads the commission’s Tariff Clarification and Origin Directorate, told Capital.
A 30-day extension can be granted for extenuating circumstances, according to the directive. For example, if there is a delay in acquiring documents, laboratory reports or expertise comments.
The BTI will be intact only for three consecutive years and will be binding only through the commission and the requesting importer, but other importers may use it without the commission’s help.
The item must be imported within a year, otherwise the commission will not be obliged by the BTI. The commission’s plan is to extend that period to three years.
The BTI will not be issued for non-produced items or those promised to be made in future, if the item to be imported is forbidden to enter to the country or if the item is explained in the Tariff book.
When a person requests a BTI but the commission declines to give it to them, they must notify that person within five working days. However, the BTI can be asked for at any time by the importer, according to the directive.
“We are amending the directive because the tariff books are very complicated and difficult for many to understand,” said Getu. “We will avail the service for anyone who wants the clarification regardless of whether the item is clearly stated in the book.”
When people were importing an item and they wanted to get a BTI, they had to travel to Addis Ababa, because it is the only head office that provide the service. Getu says they aren’t planning to expand the service to other regions currently. They want to promote the service and offer it in the headquarters. The commission is required to send the findings and the BTI to all branches within 30 days for them to implement their calculations. The branches will serve the customer when they come with a declaration, original and copy of the BTI later, comparing it to the initial one sent from the head office.
They are primarily using a centralized service because of the binding nature of the BTI and so it can be used for other transactions. “We need to make this decision with a very critical nature and the issue of abuse should also be taken seriously,” said Getu.
The directive also stated that if there are going to be additional fees; such as laboratory costs professional fees paid to consultants outside the commission, the importer will cover them.
IF NOT CAREFUL WE CAN LOSE ETHIOPIA
Everybody in Ethiopia wants a solution to the current political problem …and something that works. Unfortunately there can be no solutions until the problems are clearly exposed. The country is bankrupt, investment has literally stopped, the Diaspora is going back, the country is polarized along ethnic lines and key political leaders don’t talk to each other. It’s like an apocalyptic movie playing out in real life.
From the ideological conflicts that dominated the Derg regime we have moved to ethnic conflict, tribal atavisms, identity politics, led and nurtured by cynical politicians who politicized and manipulated ethnic identities to gain or retain power. Obviously the creation of nation-states out of multinational Ethiopia did not help to unite the country, rather hastened its break-up. No doubt that there will be hell to pay when the patriots, or protestors, or ‘Keros’ or ‘Fanos’ (whatever you want to call them) with nothing better to do come out onto the street.
Apparently nobody knows what the heck they’re protesting anymore.
Are they protesting over economic security and insecurity of individuals and groups, the relatively better off and worse off, over public expenditures and redistribution under conditions of growing economic austerity? Or is the fight still over state power and political rights, now based on ethno-nationalist claims, not alternative ideologies and parties?
No one is clear. But one thing is sure: peace is not their goal.
A constant in Ethiopia’s political history is that our leaders were for the most part never ready for the politics of peace. Arguably they did not have the skills or attitudes necessary to govern democratically. They did not have ability to compromise, cooperate, and dialogue, and readiness to be tough on the issues, but not on the people.
The current leaders got also things confused. They underestimated the difficulty of steering Ethiopia away from the quicksand of the destructive ethnic politics. They were quick to please their foreign audiences and align internal priorities and policies to their demands. Not having addressed in meaningful way the governance issues that divided the country, they failed to face the future and rise above divisive politics, and ‘zero-sum’ politics.
So what do you think, Dear Reader?
A solution is not likely to come from one corner. Today, we all understand that at the core of Ethiopia’s political and social make up, no one group can impose a solution to the others. Ethiopians have discovered and now value diversity, and this is what could have made the country strong, if country is what we want.
In an increasingly polarized and violent national landscape, our political leaders unfortunately do not seem to want to engage in real negotiations and stop demonizing each other. Across the country, ethnic politics is hastening further decentralization of power away from federal actors toward local officials, at the expense of national cooperation. An ever growing number of major decisions are taken by regional state actors. Call it what you wish the sound of things falling apart has become too loud to ignore.
The transition toward a leaderless country is now complete. No matter how long PM Abye Ahmed remains in Arat Kilo without a solid party backing him, his future seems doomed. Ethiopia, once a solid polity in the region, is now a wild card. Instead of a single country that wants to move forward in all its diversity, it’s now becoming the single biggest source of regional and international uncertainty.
“Thank God we don’t live in Ethiopia,” you might say to yourself. But that’s just the point; you may soon.
You see ethnic conflict has become the one solution preferred by today’s politicians around the world. Indeed, the demand for national ethnic rights was in fact an attack on the corrupt, repressive, brutal character of the regime (as embodied in the federal institutions and economic policy). But by justifying those ethnic rights on ethno-nationalist grounds, on the claim that the state of Ethiopia was artificial or dictatorial, or both, the propagandists deprived social democrats, liberals, socialists and other left or right wing secular forces of any grounds for debate. These forces are silenced by the simple act of non-recognition. They have no space for protest and mobilize.
Isn’t time to seek for international mediators who can broker a temporary solution? Maybe!
Look, we have a rocky road ahead, and 2019 will have more than its share of decisive political moments. Starting with elections, I can’t see how it can take place in the current situation. By the way, “Free and fair elections” should not become an “Ikea” kit for democracy, so why not start considering staging a national conference to seek solutions to the many existential threat the country is facing?
It’s a prospect that deserves more serious attention and debate than it’s gotten so far.
By Kebour Ghenna
RESISTING THE NEW ARISTOCRACY
The last three decades of market oriented policies in Ethiopia have given us a society where cause and effects have become quite incongruent. Generally speaking, work, particularly creative hard work, is the necessary precondition to acquiring real wealth. This underlying assumption, which served as the corner stone of capitalist reproduction for centuries, is hardly valid in the mature market economies of the world system. In fully monetized economies, it is money creating more money (M-M) that underlies current capitalism. In the so-called developing economies, wealth should be the outcome of a taxing vocation called work, usually productive work (M-P-M). Ethiopia’s modern sector seems to have managed to leapfrog this essential phase of capitalist economic formation. Like those modern ‘feudal lords’ of the advanced industrialized economies, our primordial economy has started to create its own version of a new aristocracy (compliment of unearned income) without even creating the multitude serfs!
One can trace the anomaly of the modern sector to the shallow and unsustainable economic orientation, which decisively favored ‘rent seeking’ above all else. Despite the empty rhetoric of the state (its functionaries) and the parasitic market operators closely aligned to it, what actually obtains in today’s Ethiopia is a ‘rentier system’ par excellence! Land, capital, even labor (thanks to the ethnic configuration of the Republic) are, to a very large extent, under the control of the politicos! The federal model and the market-oriented policies of the EPRDF regime practically and effectively abrogated the land proclamation of the mid 1970s, which made all land the collective property of the nation to be administered by the incumbent state! According to the constitution, the regional states are bestowed with full rights when it comes to land and associated matters. Since the responsibility of allocating as well as administrating land (and related issues) falls under the executive branch of the various regional states, ‘rent seeking activities’ arising from thus, became the main driving force of the entrenched bureaucracies, literally speaking! Formally, there are guidelines to effect equitable distribution of land, but in actuality, it is those connected to the power that be who are conspicuously favored. Characteristically, the politicos leveraged the country’s land in ways that led to the creation of a bona fide landed aristocracy. Herein lies one of the major problems of the country!
In Ethiopia, functionaries or administrative officials (private/state) are also empowered to allocate credit, without much regard to the overall balance critically required by the economy at large. It is this imbalance that is now troubling the country’s economy. Plenty of uncollectable debts have accumulated in the banking system, mostly because of mal-investments in the manufacturing industries, commercial farming, real estate, hotels, export businesses, etc., etc. Since critical thinking is literally ‘outlawed’, common sense cannot dare intervene in such policy matters. For many capable souls going with the flaw became less taxing on the psyche. To those with more pressing conscience, the alternative was either to pack and go or avoid active engagement with the reigning narrative. In the mean time, those connected to the money spigot accrued massive benefits/wealth. When the time of reckoning comes, one can be assured that it won’t be the crooks that would be in hock. Most likely, it would be the sheeple (human mass) that would be on the hook. This is how our so-called wealthy people were/are created in the last three decades. They are created out of thin air, just like the phony money availed to them to buy out settlers from their domiciles, income generating enterprises, etc., etc. It is this grave disfranchising project that became one of the rallying points against the old guards of the EPRDF leadership. The long-term effect of these malpractices is yet to be felt. Currently, the new aristocracy is still enjoying the fruit of its corruption!
It is obvious that our modern day feudal lords will not let go of their privileged positions. At the same time, the sheeple is tired of the mostly vacuous preaching of the elite and its political leadership. The ruling party seems stuck with its old unworkable ways. Dynamic new leadership grounded on various critical thoughts (of all kinds) and endowed with analytical disposition seems unavailable, at least today. Even the hated ‘Mafiosi State’ is still largely intact and seems only to change its tack, not its criminal conviction. Once trust, hence legitimacy, is lost, it would be extremely difficult to bring it back. Gimmicks and trickery cannot go on forever and they will be exposed by the truth sooner than later. We doggedly repeat our old recommendation to EPRDF. EPRDF must accept its mistakes and go back to the drawing board, with a view to dismantling the all rounded ‘rentier system’ it enacted, probably inadvertently. To this end, an effective nation wide integrity system that will significantly involve the public at large must be put in place. The economic policies that are unrealistic and waste a lot of resources, while producing almost nothing of importance, must be seriously interrogated by capable thinkers and not only learned idiots. In short, EPRDF need to dismantle the structure of governance and rent seeking activities that have unleashed a fledging new aristocracy upon the unsuspecting sheeple. Believe it or not, this new aristocracy is effectively dismantling the country!
“I don’t think people realize how the establishment became established. It simply stole the land and property off the poor, surrounded themselves with weak minded sycophants for protection, gave themselves titles and have been wielding power ever since.” Tony Benn (British Politician; 1925-2014) Good Day!
