The Addis Abeba City Government last week fired more than 40 employees from its Land Administration and Development Authority and injected an almost entirely new generation staff.

Following the conclusion of the Business Process Reengineering (BPR) study, Mayor Kuma Demekssa's administration sacked Daniel Mamo Gezahegn Yebelu, both deputy general managers of the authority, as well as the 40 plus employees from an agency that has long been criticized as the breeding ground for corruption.

The new staff of the authority, who have just learnt that they are on the payrolls of the agency, had been trained on the ruling party's policies, strategies and its programmes for the city for a period of three weeks at Alage Agricultural Technical Vocational Training and Education (TVET) College 163Km east of Addis Abeba.

An enquiry by the Federal Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission on the authority and parallel offices of the ten districts revealed that the working systems had been corrupted.

After the commission revealed its findings to the Caretaker Administration, it arrested 60 officials and employees of the same administration.

Over one hundred housing associations were also banned by the Federal High Court in connection with the alleged corruption of over 500,000Sqm of land.

The measures have created a shortage of staff at both city government and district levels, along with frightening the existing staff from making decisions on land related issues.

Kuma's administration, on the other hand, has been criticized for its delayed performance but the administration claims to have been undertaking the BPR study for the last few months. The BPR is now under implementation and there are two recommendations for actions to be taken on the authority.

The first recommendation gives the chance to new graduates and it has been supported with an explanation that it is meant to ease the shortage of trained manpower.

The second is a merger between two authorities - Infrastructure and Construction Permit with Land Administration Development.

Taking the second recommendation into consideration, the city has amalgamated the two authorities and formed a new one - Infrastructure and Constructions License Authority - while it retained only ten experienced former employees and recruited recent graduates who Alagie are training for the remaining posts.

The city administration plans to recruit 4,000 new graduates in order to ease its manpower problems but an official in the administration told Fortune that the fresh graduates could not solve the complicated problems of the city.

"It will be difficult unless they are assisted by experienced staff," the official said.

But Mekuria Haile, general manager of the city opposes this view. He said that the new employees are well trained and very committed.

The merger between the two authorities is endorsed by the City Cabinet.

Infrastructure and Construction Permit Authority is responsible for issuing construction licenses and suspending the license if the construction is not progressing as per the commitment the developer entered into. It also has the mandate to totally rescind the permit if a construction is delayed by a specified period.

Formerly, this authority was accountable to the Works and Urban Development Bureau of the city, but the new structure which merges it with the other authority, also makes it accountable to the City General Manager.