When Yilikal Atnafu stepped into that bus taking him from the town of Amanuel in Gojam to Addis Abeba nearly 16 years ago, he had just a faint idea of where his life was heading. What he did know was that he had very little money, a past he wanted nothing to do with anymore, and a hometown friend to crash with when he got to the city.

A farmer by tradition, disputes with his family about land had sent him to the capital seeking a better life. Like many in his situation who do not have any formal education or training, he started work at a construction site for the first three months of his stay, earning his living by mixing, carrying and plastering cement.

Since then, Yilikal worked 12 years, loading and unloading 50Kg cement bags from trucks to warehouses and from warehouses to client trucks for 25 cents a quintal or two bags. Nowadays, the price is three Birr a trip, a considerable change from what Yilikal was getting paid at the time.

But years of saving and pooling resources with his wife, who left to work overseas as a domestic worker, enabled them to open a cement retail shop. A welcome relief from the back-breaking work for Yilikal and a more dependable source of income.

Now, his shop lines the street by the Abo Junction on Sierra Leone Street (Debre Zeit Road), one of the many popular destinations for retail cement along with Qera, on Dejazmach Beyene Street, and Megenagna Station. He has been retailing cement for five years, selling up to 3,000ql a month.

"Business was never that profitable," said Yilikal, a father of five. "But I always have food on the table, and I can send my children to school."

But it has been nearly two months since Yilikal's cement shop ran dry. The entire block used to have cement delivered at least twice a week. It now has gone down to as few and far between as once in two weeks.

"It's been months since I paid for my order," Yilikal said, as he pulled out a receipt made out to the Ethiopian Industrial Inputs Development Enterprise, one of the five companies mandated to distribute Portland Pozzolana Cement (PPC) in the country. The bill shows 53,900 Br was paid on June 23, exactly two months ago.

Cement is how he has earned his livelihood for the past 16 years, but he is not so confident anymore. Last month, he closed up his shop, because he had nothing to sell. But even doing that had consequences since the local authorities had forbidden them to close, lest they shut them off for good.

"They want us to stay open regardless," he said. "Why are we open if we have nothing to sell?"

Construction and, by extension, the cement business provides jobs for close to 600,000 people in the city. This was what the government was attempting to insure when it came out with the new decision authorising only six companies to distribute cement in the country at the beginning of this June.

Guna Trading House, Ambasel Trading House, Biftu Adugna Business, Ethiopian Industrial Input Development Enterprise, Wondo Trading and Investment PLC and the Ethiopian Trade Works Corporation were selected to exclusively wholesale Portland Pozzolana Cement (PPC) products, one of the two types of cement produced in the country.

The Ministry of Trade & Industry took this decision hoping to regulate the skyrocketing price of cement and decrease the involvement of illegal traders disrupting the market alongside putting a price ceiling on cement.

But this has caused more problems than it has solved as far as testimonials across the cement chain relay. From retailers and wholesalers to contractors, who have had to reduce and in some cases even stop their projects, the issues reach all the way to the labourers, whose daily bread and butter depend on how many bags of cement they carry to and from the trucks.

The problem seems multifold.

The five companies wholesaling cement may have bitten off more than they can chew. The companies do not have experience in cement distribution, and that affects the smooth transition from delivery to distribution, according to Girma Gelaw, managing director at BamaCon Engineering Plc, a grade-one contractor, qualified to undertake projects worth over 200 million Br.

"This requires a facilitated interaction from having adequate storage to transportation means," he said.

As far as the price regulation intended by the newly enacted decision of the Ministry, the price of cement has increased by up to 80pc, according to Girma.

"We're buying what we need from the black market, because we need to keep our projects going," Girma told Fortune.

BamaCon, in the construction business for 13 years, requires 2,000ql of cement a day to keep all its projects moving at full capacity. But the current supply is below half of the demand, according to Girma.

Structural works, which require the use of bulk Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC), transported in special trucks, is not under the mandate of the wholesalers so the impact there has been cushioned.

This stands in stark contrast to an almost 80pc halt in finishing work that requires PPC bag cement.

"We have to keep going to maintain our clients and employees," said the director of the company, which employs 2,000 workers. "It's a difficult position to be in, as we're also obligated to retain all our employees in this difficult time."

Retaining employees is an obligation that the construction companies are expected to do under the State of Emergency laws. But the daily labourers working to make ends meet at the retail shops across town are not afforded this luxury. Their work lives and dies with the cement that is delivered.

Yigerem Yehuala, who works near the retail shops around Abo Junction, has been having a hard time because of this. He used to make close to 3,000 Br a month in this line of work, but with the delivery of cement getting lower and lower, these days he is splitting 400ql of cement worth 2,400 Br with five others.

"We're getting really strapped about what to do," he said, sitting outside one of the empty warehouses, his work clothes on, tattered and cement-specked baggy pants and shirt, in the unlikely case a truck comes by. "We just want to be able to work and support our families."

But even construction sites, their other option for work, are also not hiring as they too have been impacted by the shortages.

In Qera, where retailers say they normally have an overflow of cement during this time of the month, the shops are now instead lined with out-of-work labourers, sitting on stones. Everyone is eagerly awaiting cement.