Security issues, high staff turnover, lack of employee housing, low wages and inadequate hardship allowance, lack of clean drinking water, lack of banking, telecom, and transport service, and a host of other issues continue to plague state-run sugar estates under the Ethiopian Sugar Industry Group.<\/p>\n
The executives of the ailing state-owned enterprise were in Parliament this month to present a nine-month performance report to the Public Enterprise Administration Committee.<\/p>\n
During the hearing, MPs presented Group executives with concerning observations from their own visits to several of their largest sugar estates.<\/p>\n
The administers around more than 86,000 hectares of sugarcane plantations with an estimated annual production capacity of 600,000 tons of sugar.<\/p>\n
The estates mentioned in the Committee\u2019s report include the Omo Kuraz factories located in the South Omo Zone of the South Ethiopia Region, and the Wonji and Metehara estates in Oromia.<\/p>\n
An official document obtained by The Reporter<\/em> reveals serious gaps in Omo Kuraz, where the Group has taken over operations from Chinese contractor Genertec Complant.<\/p>\n MPs note that although the Group has improved productivity and created nearly 5,000 jobs since taking over from Genertec, the Omo Kuraz factories remain in poor shape. Among the issues noted are failure to provide housing, absence of clean water, lack of road and communication facilities, growing turnover, and failure to hold on to experienced professionals.<\/p>\n An inoperable irrigation dam, outdated or defunct machinery, lack of banking services, and frequent power interruptions were also cited.<\/p>\n MPs said in Omo Kuraz V, much of the machinery and equipment was simply laying around outside without protection from the elements.<\/p>\n Lawmakers noted the Omo Kuraz estates were built at a cost of USD 341 million, most of which is debt that they warn cannot be repaid if sugar production does not pick up. The report indicates nearly 19 billion Birr is required to finalize construction of the Omo Kuraz I factory.<\/p>\n Compounding the troubles, the Committee said, are security and safety concerns, which also contribute to high staff turnover.<\/p>\n The report states that employees are often unable to fulfill their basic necessities, noting a lack of health services and medicine, as well as an inadequate inconvenience allowances (30 percent) for employees working on estates where weather conditions are particularly harsh.<\/p>\n The report commended Wonji Sugar Factory for nearly meeting its productivity goals and improved revenue. The factory produced little over 13,400 tons during the reporting period.<\/p>\n However, the Committee mentioned inadequate salary and incentive, lack of toilets, low employment opportunity, and high staff turnover. The report urged providing appropriate wages to retain staff and called on Group executives to address the housing issues frequently brought up by factory staff.<\/p>\n Similar problems were present when MPs visited Metehara, according to the report.<\/p>\n During the hearing, which was closed to the media, Group CEO Weyo Roba said he was leading efforts to address these gaps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Security issues, high staff turnover, lack of employee housing, low wages and inadequate hardship allowance, lack of clean drinking water, lack of banking, telecom, and transport service, and a host of other issues continue to plague state-run sugar estates under the Ethiopian Sugar Industry Group. The executives of the ailing state-owned enterprise were in Parliament […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":50397,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"editor_plus_copied_stylings":"{}","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1960],"tags":[1959],"class_list":{"0":"post-50396","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-latest-news-in-ethiopia","8":"tag-front"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}