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400 Diagnosing Corruption in Ethiopia
In contrast, the Addis Ababa city bureau is in a better position because
it has seven inspectors for approximately 400 licenses. Because Addis
Ababa is a relatively small area, it is also much easier to inspect mines
there. The maximum distance from the licensing authority headquarters
to a mine is 25 kilometers. Many of the mines are clustered in the same
outlying areas of the city. Five of the seven inspectors are located at subcity
level to be closer to the mines that they need to inspect. Their target
is to inspect each mine four times per year.
A shortage of properly trained and equipped inspectors can result in
inadequate numbers of inspections, inadequate time given to each inspection,
and failure to detect breaches of license conditions if the inspector
lacks adequate skill, time, or the appropriate instruments.
The lack of detailed health and safety and environmental conditions
attached to the license means the inspector has insufficient detail
against which to measure the mining company’s performance. This lack
can either weaken the inspector’s ability to assess the mining company’s
performance or increase the inspector’s discretion in interpreting the
requirements, in turn more easily allowing the inspector to extort or
accept a bribe from the mining company in return for interpreting lesser
requirements.
Some aspects of license or social development conditions may be
enforced by other government departments. For example, if the mining
company is required to build an access road, the obligation to inspect
the road would fall to the relevant federal or regional road authority, not
to MOM.
The interviews and workshop revealed the following perceptions:
• Interviewees perceived a high risk of corruption by some mining companies
that might be deliberately breaching their license requirements.
• Many interviewees perceived a high risk that mining companies were
deliberately not fulfilling their environmental obligations, both during
the exploration or mining operation and at completion.
• Respondents believed that the licensing authorities were so understaffed
that they did not have enough inspectors to properly supervise
the mining companies’ compliance with mining conditions. It was
believed that, in the absence of effective inspection and enforcement,
the companies had little incentive to comply.
• They also believed that the corruption risk would increase materially
as the number of mines in operation increased.