METEC is an institution under MOD (Ministry of Defence.). Its establishment, vision, mission as well as daily operations are always has been controversial. Everything about METEC is ambiguous. What exactly is it? Is it a public institution? A public enterprise? It’s not. It doesn’t adhere to principles that other public institutions do. It’s under MoD but at the same time it’s not. Quite a puzzle isn’t it? They say it’s an engineering plus military high tech institution. But how on earth such institution could be administered by soldiers whose high school education is being questioned? There are raw facts that are well known about METEC:

• It has never been audited
• Has countless branches almost in every sector
• Its operations are not clearly presented to the public
• All its top management personnel’s are from the military with different ranks only composed from mainly and only one tribe (tigre)
• Its procurement procedures are not clear. I doubt if there is one.
• It takes or claims to win tenders from literally all mega projects in the nation. And the Federal audit bureau in its findings states that METEC gets all the tenders without following the proper or required procedures
• It has borrowed money from CBE (Commercial Bank of Ethiopia) and DBE (Development Bank of Ethiopia), the amount is so huge even METEC is not aware of it
• It forces foreign financiers for other government institutions (like EPPCO and sugar cooperation) to channel part of the money to its mandate by imposing pre sub contract agreements.
• All projects done by METEC have quality issues or delayed forever
• It has acute lack of technical capabilities in every sector it ventures

Betlhem was in a finance department of this institution it’s obvious how extremely difficult it will be to work there. Imagine your immediate boss is a low rank soldier with no education and experience in finance. The same applies to the other bosses as you climb up the hierarchy. The difference is the more you climb up the hierarchy the higher is their military rank. They embezzle the financial resources mobilized from METEC’s various ventures. It’s one and also a perfect showcase of an institutionalized loathing of the nation.

Obviously, Betlhem goes through immeasurable agony while she works there. It’s extremely difficult to be in her position for anyone with a clear conscious. How she endures all the five years by itself is a miracle. She cannot resign becuse she knows too much and she is a potential threat. So she was “condemned” to work with them, to witness an organized mafia like theft by soldiers. Any attempts to dare to blow it up impose all the baddest things possible she could ever imagine! Betlhem dealt with uncivilized, uneducated but power full soldiers. Lukly, she manages to escape, refusing to cooperate.

What amazes me is, despite the danger she actually faces. Not only to her but to her families and loved ones she exposes corrupted practices in METEC. According to her (from the horse mouth):

• It has never been audited with an external auditor
• The Tigrayn soldiers embezels the finances through falsified justifications of payments like allowance and others
• Her bosses forced and ordered her to release payments without the proper procedures. When she tried to ask she has been told repeatedly that ”it’s an order and after all why do you worry there is no audit”
• She affirms that a very large amount of money is being loathed, that was meant for different mega projects
• She has also mentioned how the blue coral civil employees of METEC are forced to contribute from their little salaries for reasons they don’t consent to like “renaissance dam” and ”vision of Melese Zenawi” where the collected money ends up being embezzled

I urge everyone to watch this interview. Here is the link ESAT Human Righit. We should encourage Betlhem for what she did. She has played her part as a good citizen in the advent of all the odds she actually facing. We must invite her to different forums and meetings so that she could reveal more to a larger audience. In the meantime we need to seriously scrutinize her information as a very important input to tackle corruption in a more large context. Because what Betlhem exposed is an important piece of information that should be analyses and processed. It should be presented to the public to create awareness how the mafias inside institutions like METEC are loathing the nation,

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From my side, well done Bethlhem! Please keep on!

tokichabogale@yahoo.co.uk