Rome, January 13, 2010 - Today, our Foreign Minister Franco Frattini has traveled to Ethiopia where, in addition to the rituals institutional meetings, attended the inauguration ceremony Gilgel Gibe II hydro power plant, for which Italy has lavished 220 million euro. That is the most substantial credit support in the history of Italian cooperation. There would be little to celebrate after considering the irregularities that have characterized the allocation of funds, the two-year delay due to inadequate or absent, and preliminary studies of the judiciary investigation prematurely filed. Italian usual stories, in which public money is used to support business of our companies abroad, disguised as development aid projects.
It 's very likely that the Minister Frattini during his short stay in Ethiopia is committed to donate an additional 250 million euro, also in the name of development and always for the same Italian company, Salini Constructors SpA, to complete the construction the mega-dam Gilgel Gibe III. A figure slightly less than the entire sum set aside in the 2010 budget for Italian cooperation (323 million). But in this case, besides giving the taxpayers well served Italian and Ethiopian, the project will jeopardize the food security of half a million people and shocked the lower valley forever IMO, one of the regions with the highest biological and cultural diversity in the world. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people along the banks of the Omo in Ethiopia and around Lake Turkana, Kenya, relies heavily on the smooth flow of the river for agriculture, livestock, fisheries, access to water drinking. But that matters little to our government and other potential donors, such as the European Investment Bank and African Development Bank. The absence of preliminary environmental studies and social, but artfully made two years after the start of work, does not appear to be important. As a contract awarded without international tender and a realistic financial plan also appear formality. Nor does the fact that all the energy produced will be sold abroad and the local communities will gain no benefit seems to be of interest to bankers and government leaders.
The only really important thing is that the accounts of Western companies at year-end tin, that the looting of the resources of the peoples of the South continues, the bankers get their bonuses, questionable local political elite and prosper our conscience is in place because of all this we call "development", and let us spend a good new year.
CATHERINE Amick
