HIV/ AIDS has been seriously threatening the social, psychological, health andrneconomic situations of the contemporary society, in order to pave the way to mitigate thernexpansion of the pandemic, different strategies have been designed. One of thesernstrategies is the establishment of VCT Centers. Hence, the purpose of this study was tornassess vcr services and counseling applications provided by selected VCT Centers ofrnDire Dawa City. More over, an attempt was made to explore whether the counselorsrnskills demonstrated and contents discussed in counseling sessions were in accordancernwith UNAIDS and MOH vcr protocol. In order to assess VCT Services and counselingrnapplications at the VCT Centers 3 sample VCT Centers were purposefully selected fromrnGovernment Hospital, Private Hospital and NGO VCT Centers. In this study a total of 130rnclients were s elected using availability sampling techniques and 6 counselors and 3rncoordinators were purposefully selected. In order to collect the relevant data, interview,rnFocus Group Discussion, observation and questionnaires were used. Questionnaire forrnclients were prepared based on VCT protocol developed by UNAIDS and MOH. Bothrnquantitative (i.e., descriptive statistics) and qualitative data analys is methods were usedrnto analyze the data. According to the finding of the study, counseling skillsrndemonstrated by the counselors and contents of counseling discussed between the clientrnand the counselor in the VCT Centers under investigation found to be in accordance withrns tandards of VCT protocol. Howe ver, all counselors of VCT Centers did not applyrncounseling theories and techniques at all. Inadequate training for counselors, inadequaternspace for privacy and waiting area, workload on counselors, and lack of professionalrncapacity to handle serious cases were the major problems. Thus, it could be reasonablernto recommend intensive training by relevant p rofessional persons for the VCT counselors.rnFinally, based on the findings, recommendations were forwarded to minimize thernproblem and help to effectively implement counseling