(March 11, 2014, Brussels), Ambassador Teshome Toga introduced himself to members of the Ethiopian Diaspora community living and working in the Netherlands on March 8, 2014.
Briefing the participants in his introductory remark, Ambassador Teshome Toga said that the primary focus of his mission during his tenure as Ethiopia’s Ambassador to the Netherlands is to further strengthen the existing Ethio – Netherlands partnership in all areas of endeavour and to consistently and continually strive hand in hand with the Ethiopian Diaspora community.
The half-day meeting held in Rotterdam, the famous port city in the Netherlands, mainly focused on briefing members of the diaspora on the on-going development efforts in Ethiopia with particular reference to the Mega infrastructure projects and the many opportunities available for mobilizing and engaging the Ethiopian Diaspora.
Ambassador Teshome addressed over two hundred fifty Ethiopians and foreign nationals of Ethiopian origin that have gathered from different cities in the Netherlands and further encouraged them to participate in gainful activities such as small and medium size enterprises to spur an ensuing impact that benefits the members of the Diaspora in particular and the country at large.
Ambassador Teshome appreciated and congratulated the desire of the Diaspora Community to engage themselves in different ventures in the country and called on them to positively transform the nation’s image and putting the country on a firm footing enlisting it as one of the middle income nations in the not too distant future.
During the briefing session, Ambassador Teshome pointed out to the members of the diaspora the Embassies intention to establish a service charter that aims at providing efficient service in pursuit of customers satisfaction and mechanisms for redress where the services fall short of expectations. Ambassador further ensured members of the diaspora to be proactive in engaging the Embassy if they face any challenge back home with regards to their investment and other activities and promised that he would personally follow up and try to help.
During the discussion he underlined the need to differentiate between the noble cause of nation building and malicious disposition by few individuals of the extreme Diaspora blind-folded by sheer hate and bent upon blackmailing patriotic Ethiopians and tarnish the image of the country and aptly characterized their attempt as an exercise in futility.
Ambassador Teshome took into account the observations and feed-back obtained during the discussion and re-iterated his position for the need to uphold and further bolster the momentum of engaging members of the Ethiopian community. What is more he underscored the urgent need to check some of the complaints raised from the participants that discourages their effort from lack of enabling environment and bureaucratic hurdles they face in some government institutions. Members of the diaspora also raised the need to enable diaspora engagement offices at federal and regional levels to facilitate and coordinate their engagement.
Finally members of the Ethiopian community pledged to work in close partnership with the Embassy towards promoting the positive image and bolstering the interest of Ethiopia.
