The effect of government relocation policies on poor households

The relocation program undertaken in Addis Ababa, under urban renewal scheme, has adversely affected the transactions and income of women engaged in petty trading both in the new sites, as well as in Basha Wolde Chilot. Relocattees who commute from their home to Basha Wolde Chilot to carry out their work also suffered from sharp fall in their income and steadily increasing transportation cost which in turn affects their income. Employees relocated in distant sites resigned from their jobs not only out of sheer imbalance between their income and their expenditure (transport cost) but also due to repetitive late arrival and/or absence from work. Evictees incurred additional transportation expense to send their children to schools owing to absence of schools in close proximity. While the relocation is commended for enabling poor households to own a house, the cost of the house is too expensive for the poor to pay for the mortgage. The relocation, while dismantling the simplex ties of evictees personified in the form of idirs, revamped relocates’ multiplex ties exhibited through affinity or consanguinity.