Grand Kulfo Watershed Project’s core team in a meeting evaluated the progress being made by all five committees in their respective realms. President, Dr Feleke Woldeyes, at the helm, while taking non-performing team to task asked others to scale up the efforts.

He further said, it’s a landmark project in research and community service arena, where university is putting its best. Our existing water research and bio-diversity centres should also get involved in to it.
Dr Fantahun recapping past meeting held in March 2015, said, after evaluating the project status, all teams were restructured. Reiterating the project importance, he said, university has allocated budget of ETB 1 Million and all logistical arrangement has been made.
Dr Feleke visibly miffed with one of the non-performing committees, said, this being the priority areas, even after making resources available we haven’t achieved the expected results. All team members have to learn from the previous experiences and make headway.
River Taming Committee Team Leader, Dr Abdella, explaining progress said, his four team mates including Dr Negash have had developed a separate proposal and data collection started from the scratch as the morphology of the river is in the state of flux.
Landscaping and Beautification Committee informed the President about project-related trips made to places like Hawassa, Bahir Dar etc. to study model centres consumed 70% of allotted budget. Aanalysis, baseline objectives and case studies were performed.
Socio-Economic Survey Team, said to have carried out survey in which they spoke to the local representatives to identify catchment and priority areas and promises to scale up efforts.
Expressing displeasure over Hydro-Meteorological Team’s under-performance, Dr Feleke suggested the team to be reorganized by involving other members for better result.
Dr Thesome Yirgu speaking for Land-use Planning & Watershed Development Committee said, under pilot study, the team has discussed and defined planning areas; bio-physical and socio-economic survey, land use topography, stream density, soil depth and analysis of the focus areas etc have been conducted.
President giving patient hearing to all committees urged Dr Negash and Dr Abdella to guide non-performing team. He also asked committee members to self evaluate, do exemplary tasks and told to develop activity plans and meet periodically.
By Corporate Communication Directorate: Philips Joseph