Those active on social media platforms were bitter last week about the inconvenience of living in Addis Abeba, gossip noticed. There is no adequate transport, electricity, water, internet or mobile communications network, so have they claimed. In a way, most are questioning Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn’s administration on its competence to properly provide public services – one of the main raison d’être of the state, gossip claims.
The aggravation of the public comes as a result of growing frustrated at being unable to be receive a functioning public transport system, gossip observed. There ought to have been resignations in droves by those in charge of the nation’s transportation system, with the growing number of commuters lined up everywhere in Addis Abeba – a city whose mayors are proud in naming “the diplomatic and political capital of Africa”.
The standard answer from those in the administration is that all these problems are temporary and the public simply needs to employ patience. Sustainable solutions are, reportedly, underway, gossip observed. They urge for understanding and pledge to provide temporary relief. One such relief is the administration’s decision to invest close to 1.7 billion Br for the purchase of around 500 buses from a Chinese manufacturer, gossip disclosed.
The contract to import the buses has been granted to the ever expanding state-owned Metals & Engineering Corporation (MeTEC), claims gossip. After arriving, these buses are planned to be deployed in Addis Abeba to serve members of the civil service, who will be issued a special badge with a magnetic reader, according to gossip.
The task of ensuring the buses are manufactured in a manner that meets certain standards is left to the Ministry of Transport (Mot), under the watch of Worqneh Gebeyehu, its minister, according to gossip. It is hoped that he will not make the same mistake one of his predecessors, Junadin Sado, committed during his reign as Transport Minister, with the importation of as many midi-buses (known in town as “Higer”). Junadin had refused to listen to the cautionary voices within the transport sector on the viability of these buses, claims gossip. After only a few years in service, however, many of these buses, bought for 13 million dollars, have proven to be a liability to their individual owners and the state- owned commercial bank, which had advanced the loans.
Another sector of aggravation in recent weeks, as has been the case almost constantly over the past few years, is the state owned telecom monopoly, ethio telecom. Guarded zealously by the powers that be, it is one of the state-owned enterprises most known for abuse of its monopoly status within the national economy, claims gossip. Not even those responsible for the architecture of its monopolistic position are able to defend its managers’ incompetence and disservice to the public and the country, according to gossip.
Nonetheless, the height of the crises in poor service reached its peak last week, when for three consecutive days it was virtually impossible for subscribers to get make calls.
Never mind that there is a management that cares enough about its subscribers from whom they milk cash to offer a public explanation and apology on the crisis, gossip noticed. Indeed, there is a general cultural deficit in communications within the realm of the Revolutionary Democrats, gossip observed.
Communications through the mobile network was difficult last week, mainly because the Chinese ZTE had its technicians at work servicing the entire network – perhaps for the first time since 2011 – gossip disclosed. Although annual maintenance has to be carried out once a network is deployed at over 80pc of its capacity, three years have passed without one being done, claims gossip. The state-owned monopoly has two million more subscribers than the network’s current capacity of 20 million, gossip reveals.
Maintenance was taken from the infrastructure providers due to the entrance into the picture of the French company, Orange, as a management contractor. Orange’s managers decided, at some point, to take away the maintenance responsibility from the infrastructure providers to the operator. Ironically, this was at a time that the ETC was restructured to ethio telecom, and lost many of its in-house technicians as a result.
Things seem to have gone back to square one, claims gossip. Last week, managers of ethio telecom signed a contract with ZTE to resume annual maintenance, which began right away, gossip disclosed. Hence, the temporary glitch in the network, which appears to have been overcome by late on Friday afternoon, claims gossip.
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