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 LUG BUUR vs. REVENUE. By M. SH. Gasoowe
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�As the dusk comes close, the number of the people in the queues also increases. Nowadays, the newest asphalt urban road in the midst of Jigjiga City becomes a daily to pilgrimage site to lots of women, little girls and boys and elderly men with donkeys. They spend up to 5 hours standing in queues and waiting for turns.
These people are seeking the rare and precious natural resource in our region. Two SCANIA Tanker drivers in different corners of the city had also started their engines. One driver is glad for his job and is singing a thankful melody in which he praises his cousin, the one who gave him such notable job. The two tankers met in the midst of Jigjiga city and rolled down newest asphalt road. Due to his lack of driving license, the singing driver had problems to control the machine and narrowly misses three kids who stood the last part of the queue. The frightened kids screamed as the giant white machine passes inches from their mal-nourished skins.
The women yelled and called names to the already passed SCANIA while the three old men silently murmured to things that only their donkeys could understand. The singing driver also he utters some nasty words on the kids and continues to praise his Cousin, his Employer, The New President, saying �I�m Hopefully Devoted To You, Comrade Fat Leg�.
The two drivers, the poor women, the little girls and boys and the three skinny old men with the three skinny donkeys have the same mission. All these people have same objectives but different strategies. They are all waiting to get the RARE and PRECIOUS NATURAL RESOURCE in our region. That is WATER �
It�s about few months, since the new regime led by Mr. Abdulahi Hassan Lug Buur and Abdi Ali Shagah took the power of the state. Since then, there were many procedural errors and abuses of power committed by this infant administration. The infamous blocking of the accounts of many local investors and NGO�s may be some bright examples, but the problem had not been discovered before last month. It was on the weekend when the new regional president summoned his cabinet for the first session that people of the region had long waited to.
In order to enhance the lives of the people, people had mixed speculations upon the kinds of development policies and plans the new president will present. In the streets of Jigjiga town, local folks were eagerly discussing the merits of the new administration which is locally known �Xukuumada Jeelka�, since almost all of its officials were former inmates of the infamous Jigjiga Central Jail for allegations of mass corruption crimes.
Unfortunately, the new president didn�t present any economic, social or policies, but instead he focused all his energy and time on accusing the Jigjiga Local Water Authority about misuse of what he erroneously called �Water Revenues�. Finally, the cabinet endorsed the president�s proposal to establish an Ad-Hoc Committee to investigate the use of the �Water Revenues�.
In this writing I want to comment the problems that the Local Water Authority has and their reasons. Secondly, I want to recommend the best possible solutions to remedy the water problems. Finally, I want to discuss about the lack of policy and plans of the current weak administration.
The Jigjiga Water Supply Authority is an autonomous urban water institution
established a half a century ago. Residents of the Jigjiga town always complain about the water shortages and it�s evident on every part of the city. If you walk around the streets of the city, your eyes never miss the long queues of people, mostly women and children, lining up for a single water pipe to fill the yellow water tanks that they carry on their backs. The government high rank officials mostly live in the northern part of the city, namely Kebele 05 and 06.
These two kebeles are the kebeles that receive the smallest water supply. Residents of these two kebeles stay awake all night to wait the little drops of the water that comes around 03:00 am, only after all the other lower parts of the city finishes the routine Night Water Collection. In spite of all these water shortages around them, the government officials never questioned why the tap in their homes has no running water? The answer is simple, because all of their houses never run out of water, thanks to the White SCANIAS Water Tankers that the regional administration bought years ago to combat the annual water shortages in rural areas which are prone to
frequent droughts and famines.
Erroneously, the president used the term �Water Revenues� on his speech to the cabinet referring to the fee that people pay for water. Even the cabinet failed to correct the president that the fee paid for the tapped water is not a �Revenues�, but a tariff, which is quite different from what is called �Revenues�.
The Jigjiga Water Authority produces of water at the cost of 2.45 Birr per every cubic meter of water, but it sells to the public for 1 Birr per cubic meter. Hence, you can understand that the Authority is not profit or revenue making institution but rather budget utilizing organ which works for the interest of the urban residents.
Even the government officials aren�t immune to high water prices. The daily water consumption of a house of a Bureau Head costs around 125 Birr, including the fuel and per diems of the SCANIA tanker driver allocated for Water Supply to the home. But the government officials usually don�t pay from their pocket but instead they gave the money from their bureaus, from the budget, from the money collected in order to safeguard their interests and provide the basic services including the water.
During the last eight years, there were many attempts from the Water
Authority to raise the water tariffs to a rate that at least cover the production
cost, but every time this issue arose, the regional administration rejects and
stops the Authority from doing so. At the retail sales, the people pay a price tag of 0.50 cents for the 20 Liter Yellow OKI OIL can, which means the price of the barrel and a metric cube to be 5 and 25 Birr respectively.
You can understand what goes wrong when a government refuses to raise the tariff to only 2.75 Birr per Metric Cube solely by the mere reason that �the poor masses can�t afford to pay more than 1.00 Birr Per Cubic Meter�, when in the reality the poor masses pay 25 Birr for a dirty single metric cube to Petty Water Traders. The Authority only collects tariffs from only 30% of the water it produces. This is due to widely accustomed use of water stealing. People misappropriate the tapped water by using un-approved Water Meters imported from Somaliland, which rotates anti-clockwise instead of rotating clockwise and never bills the water that passes through it.
Literally, such crimes cause that almost two-third of the water goes un-accounted for, thus resulting tariffs to be impossible to collect. Currently, around 4000 water meters are installed in the urban houses. Half of them are not locally approved materials because these devices are either using measuring units different from the locally designed units or they are specifically designed to steal water.
Similarly, the authority employs about 120 workers who are illiterate and unskilled. To the extent I recall, there was one attempt from the Water Authority to reform the workers by dismissing the current staff and recruiting new highly skilled workers since the current workers were habitually accustomed to corruption. Some of them even play the role of accomplices by giving the water stealers the know-how techniques to steal the water or to cheat water meters. Unfortunately, the Regional government vetoed the decision and barred the Water Authority from executing the
staff reform plan since there was an upcoming election and mass dismissal of 120 illiterate corruptors will greatly impact the SPDP candidates running for the regional and federal parliament seats.
Back to my discussion, I remember in the summer of 1994 Ethiopian Calendar, the Regional Water Development and Natural Resources Bureau granted a project worth about 300,000 Birr, to Federal Water Works and Supervision Enterprise to assess the problems inherited in the local urban water supply and recommend the rightsolutions.
The WWSE recommeded the following:
1. To establish a board of directors that will administer, direct, regulate and
supervise the overall activities of the Authority.
2. To decrease the number of the workers, and dismiss all the current staff and instead substitute few highly skilled and trained workers.
3. Since the production expenses cost ten times higher than the amount that the Authority derives and collects from the public as tariffs, to increase the current tariff to rate of 5 Birr per Cubic Meter.
4. The Regional Government should allocate 50 million Birr to fund a proposed Jigjiga Town Water Supply Upgrading Project which is designed to meet the current densely populated Jigjiga town. The project was formulated in consistence with the new Master Plan of the city and can in use in the next 25 years.
5. The Regional Government should buy about 50,000 Water Measuring Meters from the central government and change all the current water meters that are not issued from the Water Authority.
The report and the recommendations of the WWSE are submitted to the president�s office. Unfortunately, in the cabinet meeting which discussed about the Jigjiga Water problem never asked what was the bounded document that lay on Mr. Lug Buur�s table, close to his right hand. That document was the report of WWSE.
Now, let�s discuss about the true intentions of Mr. Lug Buur. Before he is crowned as the president he lived in Jigjiga. Honestly, if you investigate the financial documents of each regional bureau, you�ll find that each bureau spends more than 15,000 Birr to its white SCANIA Tanker, because if fetches water! But why every bureau wants water? Because little flower plants that grows in front of their offices need to be irrigated. Unfortunately, there are no flowers to be seen.
Apparently, the president knows the true areas that corruption is infested. No doubt he once dreamt and wished to be tax collector. That is Revenue Bureau where 1 Birr per cubic meter is not collected but in every evening millions of Birr is distributed among the top men (in the party SPDP and the Government). He even knows that those deciding to investigate the misuse of water tariffs are those who built great villas and palaces within a month of holding a post of Bureau Head.
If Mr. Lug Buur is good faith enough to combat the wide spread corruption and mismanagement of public funds, I�ll suggest that he focuses on the relation of the tax collectors and high rank officials. Last month, the Revenue Bureau dismissed 9 tax collectors on allegations of corruption, no further action was taken. Unfortunately, after the dismissal, the Bureau Head reinstated one Tax Collector to his job. Curiously, I enquired the reason that only 1 was reinstated among the dismissed, it was obvious,
because this man is president�s cousin, (Ina Adeerkii).
Even if we go further in the Revenue Bureau, the president had personally ordered the Revenue Bureau Head to promote one of Lug Buur�s nephew to the post of administration and Finance Officer, which was vacated after its previous holder get appointed to the Head of the Investment Bureau for an undisclosed sum of money. Pretending to be working for the good of the people, Mr. Lug Buur recently made unexpected supervision on some
bureaus. He paid a surprise visit to the Regional Health Bureau and the Finance Bureau.
But, after I investigated and made some enquiries to people around there, the president�s mission and intentions became clear. The Health Bureau was planning to implement the 2nd round of the Polio Immunization Campaign on that week and the Finance Bureau was also implementing The Last Phase of District Budget Reform in the nine zones in that same week. Huge budget, mostly from Foreign Aid, had been allocated for these 2 projects, and both needed a lot of cars to be rented in order to reach all the sites. An insider told me that Mr. Lug Buur had persuaded the 2 Bureaus to give the transport contract to 1 of his best friends. Within a day of Mr. Lug Buur�s commemoration, he attended a feast held by a famous Business Woman in
Jigjiga. A week latter the woman won a multi million contract from the Lug Buur�s government to furnish houses of newly appointed bureau heads. That contract was funded from the PCDP (Pastoral Community Development Project), budged which is funded by the World Bank, in which Lug Buur served as Department Head prior to becoming president. Make no mistake that the above mentioned business woman was awarded such heavy contract solely upon her relationship with the current EX-CONVICT
government.
Currently, the Bah Geri affinity relationship is highly recommended. If you luckily married to a Bah Geri wife you might have the highest probability of getting appointed or nominated or be reinstated if you have been sacked from your job just like what happened in Kebri Bayah district when the district elected parliament sacked their District Revenue Bureau Head on corruption allegations, the president compulsory reinstated the sacked official named Budul Abdi since he was married to a Bah Geri Wife and Abdi Ali Shagah was also maternal relative to him.
Mr. Budul was lucky enough to have been married a president�s nice and also his maternal uncle Mr. Abdi Ali Shagah was the SPDP�s chairman and Head of Regional Finance and Economic Development Coordination Bureau, what a coincidence?. Mr. Lug Buur�s government became synonymous to nepotism, favoritism and maladministration as well as Revenue related dismissal and reinstatement.
Mr. Lug Buur puts lots of his energy upon workers attendance. He imposed that if a worker is absent from his job for a half a day, a sum of money, corresponding the day�s wage, will be deducted from his salary, which caused that lots of money to remain in the accounts of the Finance Bureau without a defined status. Will this money be treated as penalty fine and transferred to the revenue account? Will it be treated as new budget and categorized as supplementary fund? Still the Revenue Bureau says it has no clue. No body knows how much it is and where it is debited upon.
However, the president�s wife never attended her workplace for almost 3 years. She never saw the workers attendance sheet, leave alone to sign. If you are curious about who collects her salary, don�t be surprised to see the signature of Mr. Lug Buur on her Bureau�s payroll.
To illustrate the leadership characters of Mr. Lug Buur and his government, here are some examples:-
04/11/2005. One person was killed when members of same family fought over the ownership of carved stones buried beneath the ground. These stones found in the northern part of Jigjiga city were remnants of ancient town which was buried long time ago. At the same, Mr. Lug Buur and his government were unaware of the historic sites that peasants were trying to destroy.
12/11/2005. In a cabinet meeting, the president was briefed that local authority in Dhagah Bour Zone had reported that corpses of large birds, swans and ducks were seen in different sites in the zone and that they suspected a flue-like symptoms that appear on 3 patients in the Zonal Hospital. The report had requested an emergency action, since they fear what they describe as Bird Flu. After he was briefed, Mr. Lug Buur diverted the focus of the meeting to the workers attendance in the workplace.
15/11/2005. More than 20 persons were killed on Kebri Dahar after prisoners staged and attempted the biggest Jail Break in the regions history. At that day, the president was lobbying in the Health and Finance Bureau to award a transport contract to one of his friend. Awkwardly, Lug Buur�s government even didn�t know what happened in Kebridahar when miles away internet sites were reporting the incident.
17/11/2005. The UK ambassador called the Regional Council wanting to know what exactly happened in Kebridahar, the Speaker of the Regional Parliament refused to talk with the Ambassador. Five hours latter, Mr. Lug Buur assigned the Party�s Vice Chairman to handle the crises and silence those calling more explanation. The Vice Mr. Daa�uud Gaal responded that those killed deserved such because of their belief.
17/11/2005. Latter that night, Mr. Lug Buur reportedly celebrated with Gabre Wahid, who arrived on that evening after hearing the good news from Kebridahar. Along the Speaker of the House Mr. Ali Kunaye, the trio exchanged congratulatory remarks upon what Mr. Lug Buur called a lifetime achievement to see corpse of 20 ONLF elite troops on the streets of Kebridahar.
22/11/2005. 45 houses were burned down in a village near Kebri Dahar called Fool Jeex, this barbaric act, which constitutes war crime in legal sense, and was similar what the Sudanese government were alleged in the Darfur Province was committed by the military. Meantime, the president was no where to be seen.
We really can�t list what Mr. Lug Buur did the first 100 days he was in the office nor we can tell what kind of backwardness that his administration added to the previously under developed region.
Nowadays, the president began to dismantle, shuffle, or disassemble existing
bureaus or establish new bureaus on personal grounds. The Irrigation Development Authority was disassemble because the current Water and Natural Resource Bureau Head, Mr. Abdulahi Fidar, complained that his bureau hadn�t fat budget enough to compensate his ambition of becoming the regions president. Since Abdulahi Fidar was a favorite front runner of the Presidential run, as compensation, anything he requests has to be proceeded as it is. As a result, The Irrigation Development Authority was disestablished and added to the Water Development Authority. After a
month, the Regional Vice president complained that his Vice-ship had no budget to manage.
I response to his complaint, Mr. Lug Buur shuffled his cabinet structure
in which he combined the Office of the Vice President and the Organizing and
Public Participation Coordination Bureau. Reportedly, Mr. Lug Buur was glad that the Vice has now other things to focus instead of focusing the president.
However, the president was doing all these shuffling not for the good reason of the public interest but for satisfying individual interests. The president holds the record of Taking Erroneous Actions, but the burning question is not HOW LONG WILL IT REMAIN IN the POWER, but HOW MUCH WILL IT MISMANAGE IN IT�S TERM? Wish that it will disappear soon before it swallows the poor women and children standing in long queues waiting their turn to fill the yellow OKI OIL cans with filthy water.
Eventually, the two SCANIA water tankers that fetch water for Mr. Lug Buur and Ali Shagah Houses are also whistling down the Sheikh Ali Gure Cemetery in their daily routine Water Fetching Trips, locally known as �Dhaan Reer Magaal�. Wish they overturn before they empty the public budget for Petrol-Smelling Water that is drunk in the houses of 05 and 06 Kebeles.
Qore: M.SH.Gasoowe
E-mail: [email protected]
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