Region Poised for Double Millennium Celebration

The Hareri regional state is busy with prior groundwork for the upcoming Millennium 2000 which will coincide with the 1000 years anniversary of the birth of the city of Harar.

The region is at a forefront as regards to preparations regions are supposed to be working on to receive the new millennium.

This was noted yesterday in a seminar organized by the National Millennium Secretariat Council that discussed regional movements towards the Millennium Preparation and attempted to organize individual attempts.

Harari Millennium council head, Mohamed Shashe said, various projects are under way in the region at a cost of 900,000 birr, such as the preparation of 100 hectares of land for the Millennium village.

The village was meant for residential houses for the Diaspora to come from the US and other parts of the world-an idea he said was initiated from among the Diaspora.

He said, the regional council has taken the initiative prior to other regions by allocating the said amount.

The Council urged the regions to enhance activities not to fall behind schedule.

But some representatives from regional states complained over the Council's "coaching" role and wanted to know if they were branch offices or independent Institutions accountable to the Bureaus in their respective regions.

Resources are limited in the regions to implement such huge projects proposed by the National Millennium council, they argued.

Project management head with the council Bahiru Genete pointed out that supervising activities in regions and explained how they could utilize their limited resources effectively and efficiently.

He said, the purpose of overseeing their activities concerning the Millennium celebrations helps to prevent repeated activities from being carried out, which he said is waste of resources.

He also stressed that the Ethiopian Millennium Secretariat Council was with all the powers to design regulation as per the proclamation number 117/97.