Who killed Engineer Simegnew & why? (just asking)
State-owned Ethiopian Electric Power ( # EEP ) has failed to produce a detailed financial report for the last two years.
The problems are partly due to the weaknesses of a bloated and hierarchical utility company. Decision-making at EEP is sluggish and there are not enough empowered managers, according to individuals who work with the corporation. EEP executives are over-burdened and lack technical expertise. One consultant said even decisions to purchase cables now have to get board approval because of a lack of trust in the management. A donor representative said EEP has failed to produce a detailed financial report for the last two years. Such issues are typical of Ethiopia’s public sector, which is weakened by meager salaries, places a premium on political loyalty, and is partly an ethnic balancing act when it comes to senior appointments.
#Military_Power
Politics is also relevant at the top of an industry where veterans of the armed struggle exert considerable influence. EEP’s board is chaired by
#Debretsion_Gebremichael , a minister who was a leading engineer for the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) during the 17-year rebellion that ended with the Derg regime crumbling in 1991. The originally Leninist TPLF formed the core of the revamped military and founded the revolutionary ruling coalition that still dominates Ethiopian politics.
Debretsion oversees the # GERD, whose electro-mechanical works were contracted to a conglomerate run by military officers. Lacking the requisite experience, that group, the Metals and Engineering Corporation ( #METEC ), sub-contracted turbine construction to France’s Alstom and Germany’s Voith Hydro. While a foreign adviser says METEC’s role in the GERD has not caused problems, it has failed to deliver seperate sugar and fertilizer factories on time while pocketing substantial payments in advance. For years the ruling coalition has identified surging corruption as the primary domestic threat to realizing Meles’ development vision.
In an interview with The Reporter newspaper in March, Debretsion bullishly defended METEC’s role, arguing it helped stave off foreign pressure to downsize the GERD and was necessary to build domestic industrial capacity. He was also positive about the prospects for private investment in Ethiopian energy projects. But such views demonstrate the conundrums for Addis Ababa’s policy makers: despite the need for foreign capital, there are long-held suspicions from Marxist-influenced politicians about private profiteering; and the effort to rapidly boost energy production is sometimes at odds with aspirations to improve local engineering capabilities.
According to one energy consultant, these attitudes are a major obstacle to sustaining Ethiopia’s impressive momentum in the power sector, especially when it comes to facilitating the development of privately owned power plants. “There is still a question of whether at the highest level of the government they understand what an IPP is. It could have exploded with development if the right people were managing the economy,” the consultant said.
By William Davison
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