Addis Ababa City govt reclaims Omedla Hotel

The Privatization and Public Enterprises Supervisory Agency (PPESA) reclaimed Omedla Hotel on Monday August 10, 2009, three years after a court ruling gave them the power to do so.

The Agency says that Omedla Hotel, located near the Gotera overpass, was one of the nationalized properties by the former Derg regime, which had been reinstated to private owners without valid documents.

At nine on Monday morning police officers appeared at the hotel carrying a court order and evicted the tenants and the employees. The only tenant that remained untouched was the Gotera Branch of the Abyssinia Bank.

“It took this long because these people who claim to be owners had been going to court,” Hailemariam Yetbarek, Restitution Project Office with PPESA told Fortune. “They do not have any documents proving their ownership.”

Proclamation 572/2008 was forced by incidents in which people presented documents that were not valid to reclaim nationalized properties. This law institutionalized the reacquisition of properties that have gone to private ownership in this manner, according to Hailemariam.

“In the case of an unlawful restitution, the property shall be returned to public ownership where it physically exists, irrespective of the fact that it has been transferred to a third party by way of sale, inheritance, donation or otherwise,” reads Article Five of the proclamation.

“We could not go to court to get our voices heard because the courts could not look at cases that Privatization Agency deals with,” Mehari Belay, who was managing the hotel, told Fortune.

Mehari is the son of Belay Abate who claims ownership of Omedla. When Fortune visited the hotel compound last Monday morning, he was busy moving moving out with all the hassle that entails.

The 67 permanent employees of the hotel were in the compound with a shocked look on their faces. Some had to change their clothes because they were in uniforms and on duty when the officers arrived to shut down the hotel.

“What is going to happen to us?” a young woman who is an employee of the hotel questioned.

This question seems to be the burning concern on the minds of the employees who came prepared for their usual daily duty without suspecting closure as a possible case. This also applies to the guests staying at the hotel.

Vartkes Bilemdjian, 69, had been living at the hotel for the past six years since he moved from the US. He was one of the 15 tenants who had been evicted by the police.

“I am a refugee in my own country,” Vartkes, who holds an Ethiopian passport, told Fortune, standing right outside his room, numbered 217, with his documents in boxes. “I do not know what will happen or where I will stay”.

Now the building of the hotel will be administered by the Government Houses Agency (GHA), according to Hailemariam.

Belay says the situation is unacceptable. He points to a newspaper report on February 16, 1975, which referred to him as the owner, and a letter by Atnafu Abate, the Derg leader who preceded Mengistu Hailemariam, telling his father, Abate Wolde, that his property was nationalized by the government.

Fifteen years ago, the case became complicated when Genet Kassa, a man who had been an employee of the hotel at the time the Derg nationalized it, emerged in 1994 presenting a trade licence and unsuccessfully attempted to claim the hotel.

However, the PPESA has issued a letter seven years ago that informed Genet that he could not claim ownership; because the agency knew that Genet was an employee at Omedla and that there were no original documents at the Trade Industry and Tourism Bureau to authenticate the copies of the licence he claims to have.

“We have document evidence that the government has taken over the building from my parents,” Mehari said.

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