ADDIS ABABA (Halbeeg News) – Somali regional state (SRS) in Ethiopia has turned down plans to transfer three villages to Afar region.
In an extraordinary meeting held on Friday in Jigjiga city, SRS cabinet has unilaterally canceled a 2014 agreement transferring the localities to Afar regional state.
The cabinet ministers voted for a resolution to nullify the agreement which the state said was illegal.
“The regional cabinet has unanimously agreed that the illegal agreement that has transferred the three towns of Garba-Issa, Undufo, and Adeytu to the Afar Regional State is an agreement that has no base under the federal constitution,” the resolution reads in part, “While at the same time lacking the will of the same people impacted by the decisions under consideration coupled with a dangerous set of coercion tactics and bad faith as engineered by contrabandists under the cover of Afar regional state.”
During Friday’s meeting, the cabinet also issued a directive ordering the law enforcement agencies to enhance the security of areas along the state’s borders.
“It was agreed that the security agencies beef up the security and the stability of border areas without crossing the Somali administrative border,” the cabinet.
The meeting called for the immediate establishment of the government services in those areas.
” That the people in the said three towns should be able to genuinely self-administer by having all the three branches of local governments under relevant jurisdictions,” the statement stated, “That the people of the said three towns should be able to have access to an education system that uses their mother tongue as the medium of communication.”
The cabinet has declared that the villages will be controlled from Jigjiga, the administrative capital of the state.
“That Af-Somali is the working language for government institutions as well as the court system in the said three towns. That people of the three towns should be fully represented in administrative and legislature councils both at the Zonal and regional levels,” the resolution reads.
In 2014, the government led by the deposed leader Abdi Mohamud had signed the controversial agreement with Afar state and allowed the villages to come under the control Afar authorities.
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