Federal High Court judges have ordered the Addis Abeba City Administration to reinstate hundreds of employees to their former positions in the city's land management offices, thereby ruling a recently held reshuffling unlawful.

The city administration reassigned 400 staff working in seven of the 11 districts beginning February last year. However, officials at the city's Public Service & Human Resource Development Bureau have met resistance that their reshuffling of staff working under the Addis Abeba Land Management Bureau was carried out based on a regulation the city council had yet to ratify. It was intended to combat corruption and illegal land transfer activities observed in the Bureau, according to people close to the matter.

Many of the staff reassigned worked in districts with jurisdictions in the capital's peripheries, where widespread illicit land transfers are reported. A study conducted by the city administration last year uncovered that 383ht of land designated to be transferred to the city's land bank was instead in the hands of individuals. A few months ago, officials rescinded the title deeds of 671 plots deemed to be held unlawfully.

The Public Service & Human Resource Development Bureau, under Hailu Lulie, initiated a new employee evaluation system to determine personnel to be reassigned to other bureaus last year. Hailu was replaced by Hikman Hayreddin last September after Mayor Adanech Abiebie, and her cabinet, was sworn in to steer the new administration for a five-year term.

Employees scoring less than 75 points on their evaluations were consequently reassigned to positions at other bureaus.

Arega Tessema was one of the 16 staff reassigned from the land management bureau of Kirkos District. A land classification expert for five years, he scored 72 points on his evaluation, hence his transfer to the Environment Protection & Green Development Bureau of Lideta District.

“I work in a job that I'm not trained for,” he told Fortune.

Before joining the Land Management Bureau, Arega had completed a five-year urban planning programme at the Civil Service University. Although his salary has remained the same following the transfer, Arega feels the ordeal has been a source of emotional and psychological trauma.

“The five years I spent studying urban planning went to hell,” he said.

Nearly all of the employees that had been transferred were reassigned to jobs they are unqualified to hold, a staff who works at Arega's former office in Kirkos District told Fortune.