Capital

Perseverance is vital

By Dinkinesh Haile, Training Section Head
and
Abew Melaku, IT Head, Ghion Hotel, Addis Ababa

Background
Ghion is a national, government-owned hotel chain established in the late 1950s with eight hotels situated around Ethiopia. There are two hotels in Addis Ababa and six others mainly along the historic route in the north of the country. The Addis flagship Ghion Hotel has 436 permanent and 52 casual employees. The group has approximately 900 employees in total.
We have worked in the main Ghion Hotel in Addis Ababa for a good number of years, myself (Dinkinesh) for twenty-four years. I am currently Training Section Head and Secretary of the HIV/AIDS Committee and Abew Melaku, head of IT and Chairperson of the HIV/AIDS Committee, has worked for the hotel for ten years.
Identification of the disease within our hotel
As a government-owned enterprise, HIV/AIDS was identified as an issue through Federal HAPCO. HAPCO ran a program with the Confederation of Ethiopian Trade Unions (CETU) on HIV/AIDS sensitization and in 2002 they conducted this training for five of our managers. They then recommended that we set up an HIV/AIDS committee and conduct awareness training.
Before 2002 there were many employees who were HIV positive and this posed great challenges and the cost of opportunistic infections were 3000-7000 ETB per person, the cost that the hotel was facing on an annual basis was in the region of 140 000 ETB.
The HIV/AIDS committee
Our main HIV/AIDS committee is based at the Addis Ababa hotel and all the other hotels have sub-committees. There are seven members on the main committee, and three on each of the sub-committees in the regional hotels. The committee members are taken from across the hotel divisions such as catering, labour and management.
We thought it was a good idea to have the committee licensed as an association and as a consequence the committee has guidelines for rights and obligations. The main benefit of having a licence was the creation of an association bank account for the Solidarity Fund as the licence gives the association financial authority and makes it a legal entity. The other benefit of becoming an association is that it can ensure good sustainability, meaning that anyone can come in and perform within the association.
The hotel management is fully committed to the committee and our quarterly reports are included in the management report. The Ghion Hotel chain also provides in-kind assistance such as office space and venues for training.
Activities of the committee
Awareness-raising
Initially, workers were not motivated to learn about HIV/AIDS and we needed to use a variety of different methods such as video, cassettes from the Ministry of Health, billboards, leaflets and newsletters. We also now have an annual HIV/AIDS ceremony with film, drama and a music band.
We have worked with organisations such as ILO, Mekdim and Tesfago and we persevered with more and more and awareness-raising activities until the message got through to the staff.
Training
We have conducted work place policy training, behavioural change communication training, proposal writing and networking training, peer education training and monitoring and evaluation training.
Any training that needs to be conducted is usually done so in Addis Ababa and members from the sub-committees attend this training and then go back to train their staff in their respective hotels.
Solidarity Fund
Every member of staff contributes 5ETB to the Solidarity Fund and the financial aspects are handled by the HIV/AIDS committee head office in Addis Ababa who have been running the Solidarity Fund for five years. Only three of the head office committee members are authorized to manage the funds and the focal person is the only person who contacts the people living with HIV/AIDS and distributes the funds to them.
In order to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS and the Solidarity Fund in the first instance we held repeated trainings and heard testimonials from people living with HIV/AIDS from other organisations. Our staff were moved and wanted to assist their colleagues. The contribution was 2ETB when the Fund was first set up and after three years this increased to 5ETB.
Members of EBCA
We have been a member of the Ethiopian Business Coalition Against HIV/AIDS (EBCA) for three years and through this organisation, which is leading the business response to HIV/AIDS, there is an exchange of information, experience-sharing with other businesses and valuable training sessions.
VCT referral
We operate a VCT referral service with Betazata Family Planning Clinic for our employees.
Medical support
The Ghion Hotels Enterprise has a scheme which offers 100% medical support for its staff. In addition to this we have recently proposed an additional Article to be included in a new collective labour agreement. This dealt with prolonging the working contract of HIV/AIDS patients and guaranteeing full salary for six months if ill.
What has changed
We know there are 14 people living with HIV/AIDS within the Enterprise but today, people are no longer dying of HIV/AIDS and the cost of opportunistic infections to the hotel is almost nil.
There is increased awareness and decreased discrimination and stigma and the staff are not afraid of talking about HIV/AIDS and the medication needed. People living with HIV/AIDS are being supported and staff are more participatory.
With regard to new employees to the hotel, such as trainees from hotel schools, there is a new employees’ orientation program and HIV/AIDS is included in that program.
The difference winning the Ethiopian Business Coalition Against HIV/AIDS (EBCA) Best Practice Award has made
Winning the EBCA Best Practice Award for the highest score in HIV/AIDS innovation and results has really motivated us to work even harder. The committee and management feel that we have been rewarded for our work and we are encouraged to do more. Winning the award has been good for all staff, even those not directly involved in the committee activities, because they are inspired to join the committee and assist us.
We were very impressed by all the companies who exhibited at the EBCA Business and HIV/AIDS Exhibition in early June, but particularly by those companies who are undertaking the Rapid Results program to achieve HIV/AIDS results in 100 days. The program, supported by the GTZ Engineering Capacity Building Program and the World Bank Institute, has helped these companies achieve results in a short period of time and we hope that more companies will be given the opportunity to participate in such a program.
Looking forward
Moving on from what we have already achieved, we would like to focus on including people living with HIV/AIDS in the committee. We would eventually like them to take over the committee and run it themselves. Also on our agenda is the provision of community outreach programs and we would also like to establish a VCT service on the hotel premises and invite other hotels in the area to join forces with ourselves and work together to provide VCT for our employees.