When was your association established and with how many members? What success have you had?
First let me take the chance personally and on be half of all private employment agencies, members or not, to thank Capital newspaper for offering us this opportunity in order to help raise awareness.
Well, we are an association licensed by the Ministry of Justice, since February 2005 and we now have 20 members . All of them are legal overseas employment agencies, licensed to work in securing jobs for Ethiopians abroad.
To speak frankly about the success of our association, we can say that we have passed from the first stage of establishment and are now organizing our internal system and relations with all partners and stake holders. This includes the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, MOLSA .The next step will be establishing effective and responsible relations with the media . We found it essential to work together as many things has been spoiled because of mis-information.
The main objective of our association is to establish with the Ministry of Labor and all other Governmental and international organizations ( IOM , ILO) NGOs and Ethiopian civic organizations, a good legal conduct to enter this business and play a role by helping resolve the problem of unemployment.

We have heard your association’s official position regarding a program on ETV and a radio panel discussion , what are your complaints about those programs ?
Look, our position is one step in the long path to establish healthy and constructive relations with the media .We have submitted this position in writing to all authorities concerned including the Ministry of Information and to ETV , Radio FM 97.1and Berhanena Salam .We also submitted it to some civic organizations . Our aim is to create awareness and understanding of what is going on. We believe that the role of the media is very important in building a constructive public opinion confidence between the government and the public institutions and organizations. But we have felt that the Aynatchen program and the panel discussion on FM radio were just a form of creating distrust and breaking the ties between the effort of the government to help poor families finding jobs to fight illegal brokering and human trafficking .Every body knows to what extent trafficking and illegal brokering has hurt the reputation of our country and how many boys and girls are lost in the forests , oceans and deserts , looking for ways to change their lives and the lives of their poor families . Then when you see these programs on TV or radio, you ask your self ,what are they trying to say to the public? I can understand that they say clearly : leave these private agencies and go your own way even if it is illegal… Let me ask what those families get out of that program. What has it helped them? Nothing Just spreading horror among the public and spoiling relations with the Government and the private sector . Now a days, poor families come to the legal agencies asking their girls ,who are peacefully at work, to be brought back! Families are calling on their girls to return, without any reason.
This is totally wrong and it is not within the basic objectives of any media .We believe that these issues should be studied by professionals, discussed seriously either with public or by government institutions. There is the experience of many countries which should be looked to . It is not an emotional issue to simply gain publicity for some body or for certain a program .

But many people speak about grievances and abuses our girls are suffering , What is your response??
We agree that there are grievances and abuses. That’s why the Government has legalized the private involvement to get a good follow up for each girl sent and follow her status and report on that to help the families get information about their girls. I can say with complete confidence that the Government has succeeded in it’s decision in giving the legal private sector role in this business. We want through your esteemed newspaper, to make things clear ; This assigned job by the Government to departments heads in the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and to legal over seas private employment agencies is a very unique , difficult and complex task. These officers and agencies are dealing with people of different cultures.
We also agree that some of our agencies
need to be more responsible and transparent. We take this opportunity to announce clearly that our association is standing firmly with our government, organizations, with the public and the police force in combating illegal brokering and human trafficking and will help in building the capacity of our members in this regard .