WAUSAU, Wisconsin (Wausaudailyherald.com) — A Wausau West High School teacher this summer wants to make graduation a little more special for students on the other side of the globe.
Choral director Phil Buch has asked local graduates to donate their commencement gowns so that students in Ethiopia may wear them. Buch has collected 30 gowns since June 1, with a goal of 75.
Wausau residents Dan and Grace Esterline plan to take the gowns with them during one of their frequent mission trips to Ethiopia later this year. The Esterlines have traveled to Ethiopia since 1966 to teach theology, English and first aid.
Graduates at the Ethiopian Kale Heywet School of Mission will wear the gowns in ceremonies next spring. Other schools in the northeastern African country also will receive gowns, depending on the number of donations, Grace Esterline said.
This is the first year the Esterlines have asked Buch to help collect gowns, which will be much appreciated by students who cannot afford them, said Wausau West graduate Zeru Shiferaw.
Shiferaw, 18, emigrated from Ethiopia to the United States in 2002 with his parents and three brothers.
Ethiopia is one of the world’s poorest nations, with a per-capita income of about $700, Shiferaw said. Students at Wausau West paid $25 for their gowns this year.
“Instead of just sitting in the closet collecting dust and filling up space, it’s going to be used and appreciated by some grateful individuals,” Buch said.
Wausau West’s Wakong Lor donated the gown he wore to graduation this year — a garment that already has a lot of miles on it. It already was put to good use by some of his seven siblings, including sister Mai Ying Lor, who wore it last year.
Wakong Lor, 18, heard about the gown drive during his time in Buch’s concert chorale class. Buch also encouraged West’s 460 graduates to give their gowns after their graduation rehearsal last week.
Lor said he spoke to his cousins to see if they, too, could donate their gowns.
“I’m … just so willing to do the most I can to give back,” he said. “I understand the importance of being on the other side and receiving and how happy I would be.”
The mission school director was grateful to hear about the donations, Esterline said.
Next fiscal year’s budget shows a deficit of 10 billion birr, Sufian Ahmed, the Minister of Finance and Economic Development, told parliament Thursday. The Government was asking parliament to approve a 64.5 billion birr budget for 2009-2010 fiscal year which starts in July.
Sufian said that the revenue that the government was able to collect stood at around 54.1 billion while its expenditure would be 64.5 billion birr, showing a deficit of 10.4 billion birr.
The Government expects to fill the gap in the budget from both local and foreign sources.
Sufian said that the government was hoping it would secure a loan of 3.9 billion birr from foreign financial sources while the rest, 6.9 billion birr, would come from local sources.
He added that the 10.4 billion birr that the government was going to borrow was 1.5 percent of the GDP and would not contribute to inflation or affect local borrowing.
Some MPs raised their concern whether it was possible to secure foreign loans at a time of global economic crisis.
Sufian argued that Ethiopia often borrowed from multi-national institutions such as the World Bank, and that these institutions were not that much affected by the global crisis.
“Moreover, the World Bank grants loans or direct assistance every three years, the current period extending from 2008-2011”, Sufian said.
Other institutions like the EU had a five-year grant programme, according to the minister.
Sufian said that donor countries like Britain would not reduce their assistance since PM Gordon Brown had pledged more assistance and even urged other big economies not only to maintain the amount of their assistance to poor countries but also to increase it significantly.
According to Sufian, the flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) would not show any significant variation in the coming budget year since, in the first place, it was low.
He said that the concern right now is that remittance money could significantly reduce it. Ethiopians living abroad are seriously affected by the economic crisis.
Of the total budget, nearly 14.5 billion birr is allocated for recurrent expenditure while the capital expenditure stood at 29.1 billion birr.
The rest, 20.9 billion birr, is allocated for subsidy appropriation to the various regional administrations.
The biggest subsidy goes to Oromia regional state and amounted to 6.8 billion birr while Amhara regional state came next with 4.9 billion birr.
The smallest subsidy goes to the Addis Ababa City Administration with nearly 114 million birr.
Addis Ababa, ETHIOPIA (The Reporter) — Electric power outage is becoming one of the most devastating problems in contemporary Ethiopia. It appears to be routine practice living without light every two days, where the power sources are dominantly depend on rain-fed dams.
The Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCo), in its latest announcement, disclosed that power will be interrupted for 18 hours per shedding day for 15 days between June and July. The new schedule, which divided the nation in two groups and covers cities, towns, kebeles as well as villages, is now starting to be implemented from June 9 to July 7. Many fear that if the rain would not fall and the dams continue running short of water, the whole country would face a complete blackout. Currently, all major manufacturing firms are disconnected from the national power grid, and EEPCo told flour mills and other manufacturing firms across the nation to use electric power economically only during less power load. This time the corporation, which is already in a power crisis, is idly waiting for the rain instead of searching for other alternative sources of electric power. Its officials are too busy in telling stories about incomplete hydropower stations.
Addis Ababa, the seat of the federal government and many international organizations could not escape the frequent power shedding due to acute shortage of power. While the untapped hydropower potential of the country stands at 30,000 MW, the total installed capacity of the national grid from hydropower, diesel and geothermal sources is only 870 MW.
According to official figures, the national electric power demand gap is an alarming 120 MW, while the annual power demand growth is going up by 16 percent.
In response to the current world economic crisis which is putting a big pressure on developing economies, the World Bank (WB) is set to increase its assistance to Ethiopia to USD 1 billion, World Bank Country Director for Ethiopia and Sudan Ken Ohashi said yesterday.
In a roundtable discussion he held with local journalist, yesterday, Mr. Ohashi said that the amount of money to be available to Ethiopia is 30 percent more that what the Bank was initially contemplating.
The money will be available starting from the beginning of July, which is the start of the next fiscal year for the World Bank.
Mr. Ohashi said that the Bank is seriously considering to increase the amount of financial resources available to African countries who are beginning to feel the pinch from the current global economic crises.
He said that it was unfortunate for African countries to suffer from the crisis which was not of their own making.
Ohashi said that it was up to each African country to take measures extricate itself from this problem.
The World Bank assistance alone cannot bring change, he noted.
“Unfortunately, the burden of adjustment falls on the African countries themselves,” he said.
He added that inflation in Ethiopia seemed to go down compared to twelve months before.
“Last July, the inflation was out of control as it stood at 64 percent. This time it is not at least out of control,” he said.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – African member countries of the International Criminal Court (ICC) will not pull out of the body despite their opposition to its indictment of the Sudanese President, diplomatic sources said.
The ICC has issued an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to face charges of war crimes carried out during almost six years of fighting in Sudan’s violent Darfur region, but he has refused to deal with the court.
Africa is the most heavily represented continent in the ICC with 30 member countries. They are meeting in Addis Ababa to discuss their opposition to Bashir’s indictment.
“They will reach a consensus and ask for the warrant against al-Bashir to be deferred for some time,” a diplomat told Reuters. “But an en masse withdrawal will not happen,” he added.
Diplomats told Reuters only Libya, Senegal, Djibouti and the Comoros had lobbied the two-day meeting that ends on Tuesday for all African member countries to leave the court.
An African Union (AU) heads of state meeting in February decided the continent’s ICC members should consider such a move.
The AU has said the warrant will compromise peace efforts in Darfur, and the 53- member organisation wants the indictment deferred for at least one year.
“The pursuit of peace can be deadly impacted upon if players including a head of state, are denied even the fundamental presumption of innocence,” said AU Peace and Security Commissioner Ramtane Lamara.
Former South African President Thabo Mbeki is chairing an AU panel charged with helping to bring peace to Darfur by making recommendations to the AU’s Peace and Security Council as an alternative to the ICC indictment.
International experts say 200,000 people have died and more than 2.5 million have been driven from their homes in the remote western region since mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government in 2003. Khartoum puts the death toll at 10,000.
Lamamra described Darfur as a “low-grade conflict” and said that 130 to 150 people were killed in the region every month, one third of them civilians.
“The situation is obviously different from what the ICC prosecutor described last Friday before the U.N. Security Council as ‘ongoing extermination of civilians’,” he said.
Bashir has travelled to several countries that are not members of the ICC since the warrant was issued in March.
The leader of the oil-exporting nation has visited Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya and Zimbabwe in trips that are seen by analysts as an attempt to shore up regional support and show defiance to the international court.
ADDIS ABABA (APA) — Ethiopia, which imports around 7,000 cubic meter petroleum products a day, has an annual petroleum import bill of over one billion dollars, Ethiopian Petroleum Enterprise (EPE) said on Thursday.
EPE said this is as a result of the increasing demand for petroleum following rapid development registered in the country.
Ethiopia imports petroleum products from Sudan and Middle East via the port Djibouti.
Around 300 fuel trucks are involved daily in transporting the fuel.
