When it was announced that over 40 staff of the GAC were dismissed and that they instantly got their severance pay along with their sacked letters, speculations grew that the “financially constrained” GAC could not have acted alone. A communication purported written by Kilby to the Ministry of Finance to disburse additional severances to service another batch of redundant employees leaked, nearly confirming the speculations. But in a release issued, the Ministry of Finance has dissociated itself from the Kilby action, as The Analyst reports.

The Ministry of Finance says its attention has been drawn to conflicting media reports about whether or not the Ministry endorsed or opposed the laying off of employees at the General Auditing Commission.

“The Ministry of Finance wishes to clarify that such operational decisions are not within the purview of the Ministry of Finance and so there is no way that the Ministry can take a position, one way or another, on such internal decision,” the MoF said in a release.

“It is important that the general public is reminded that the General Auditing Commission (GAC) is headed by the Auditor General and such internal and operational decisions are exclusively within their domain. While the Ministry of Finance is charged with executing the Budget Law and ensuring that sanity is maintained within the Public Financial Management system, neither the Minister of Finance nor any of the deputies have any authority to make personnel or operational decision for any agency of government.”

The Ministry also pointed out that as reflected in the published National Budget, cuts were only made to consumables such as goods and services and the savings moved to the national priority projects such as Power, Ports, and Roads.

“In conclusion,” the Ministry said, it “will like to inform all Liberians that at this time, it is busying itself with ensuring that the resources required to jump our investment programs are available so the Liberian people can begin to see the benefits of the first medium term expenditure framework budget that it truly development focused.”

The release said Minister Amara Konneh has issued instructions to all his functional heads to ensure that sufficient resources are infused into the broader economy to bring relief to businesses and create a circular flow of economic activities. Paramount among these infusions is the payment of civil servant salaries in a timely manner so that they have a joyous holiday seasons with their families.