Addis Fortune (Addis Ababa)
Yohannes Anberbir
1 September 2008
One of the few senior Federal Government officials to have served in one office for over 15 years, Simon Mechale has been relieved of his responsibilities as chief of the nation's humanitarian and relief agency. The Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Agency (DPPA) now has a new boss.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has appointed Metiku Kassa as a fourth state minister for the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MoARD). In this role, he will head the newly restructured bureau under the ministry, named Disaster Prevention and Preparedness and Food Security Department. Metiku assumed office on August 13, 2008, and since then he has been busy implementing the Business Process Reengineering (BPR) study at the new department.
It is following the BPR that the former DPPA was incorporated under the MoARD as a department with all its duties and responsibilities. The reason is that most of the areas affected by disasters are in rural areas inhabited by people that rely on agriculture, according to the recommendation made by the study. The study thus recommended that the agency should be incorporated into the department with a focus to mitigate risks, rather than on crisis management like the DPPA.
"The ministry has been engaged in implementing the overall outcomes of the BPR studied at all departments," Matios Hunde, early warning department head at the ministry, told Fortune. "The need to accomplish it successfully has made it necessary to appoint a responsible official to the newly established department,"
The recommendations of the BPR were approved at the end of June 2008 by the Council of Ministers, ending the existence of the long established DPPA. The agency was previously called the Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission (DPPC); however, it is better known as Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC), a name given to it when it was first established in June 1974 following the outbreak of famine in two northern provinces of Wollo and Tigray. Having Shimelis Adugna as its first commissioner, the agency won its international prominence during the 1984-85 famine that claimed the lives of one million people. Dawit W. Giorgis (Major) was heading the organization during this period, and up until his fallout with the military regime in 1986. There were two more commissioners - Brehanu Jembere (Major) and Yilma Kassaye - that have administered the agency before the change of government occurred in 1991.
A schoolmate of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi at the General Winget, Simon was appointed as the fifth head of the relief agency in the early 1990s; the 2003 famine happened while he was in office, leaving close to 15 million Ethiopians food insecure. He had appealed to the world to provide Ethiopia with 1.8 million tonnes of food aid.
"It was an unprecedented, difficult, and disastrous year," Simon had told IRIN at the time.
Ironically, he was to witness another cycle of famine dubbed by the western media as "the green famine" this year, at a time when the agency found itself yet into another transformation. Unlike in the past where the organization turned from RRC to DPPC and DPPA - juggling between commission and agency - this time around it fall in the folds of the Ministry being another department.
The reengineering ousted Simon, the longest serving chief of the agency; it is not clear where his latest posting in the federal government is but he is a councilor at the Addis Abeba administration. Fortune could not solicit comment from Simon, despite several attempts.
Before his new role, Metiku, who recently obtained a second degree in Animal Science from the United Kingdom (UK), served as head of the relief coordination and food security department at the Agriculture and Rural Development Bureau of the Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples Regional State (SNNPR). Though he joined the regional bureau two years ago, he spent almost a year there studying BPR, according to sources.
The other three MoARD state ministers are Aberra Deressa, who leads the agriculture sector, Ahmed Nasse, head of the natural resource sector and Yacob Yala, the agricultural export sector boss. All of them report to Addisu Legesse, minister of MoARD, and deputy prime minister.
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