Monrovia — Liberian elites in government are treating their destitute citizens in the leeward counties with neglect, says U.S. Ambassador Michael McCarthy following the climax of his county tour he embarked on three weeks ago.
At his press roundtable on March 28 this year, Amb. McCarthy, with excitement, announced he was resuming his tour of the counties to see at first hand, the various projects the United States Government was undertaking in collaboration with its Liberian counterpart.
He said back then: "I've said this before: one cannot know Liberia if you only stay in Monrovia. I'm excited to spend time outside of the capital and to see the various projects that the U.S. Mission is working on in partnership with Liberians to help deliver better health care, education, and economic development.
However, upon completing the tour that took him to Bomi, Gbarpolu, and four counties in the Southeast [which completes his visit to all 15 counties of Liberia], the U.S. envoy's enthusiasm seemed to fade, evidence of a bombshell statement that followed.
"Unfortunately, on the trip I was startled and deeply troubled to encounter multiple county hospitals that received not one penny of what they were promised in the 2022 budget. Hospitals on which lives depend, where outbreaks are prevented and suffering is alleviated, did not receive any portion of the US$100,000 or more appropriated by the legislature for them to operate," he said in a strong-worded press statement issued by the U.S. Embassy on Monday.
Continuing, he said: "Lest you think this is the work of one political party, that notion was quickly dispelled by Liberians I talked to. The blocking of resources is so complete that it must be institutional: and the lack of any alarm being raised indicates a syndicate involving players at the legislature, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs."
Rich country, poor people
Liberia is rich in mineral resources with abundant water and large forest, but majority of its citizens live below the poverty line. Its politics is in the framework of a presidential representative democratic republic modeled after the United States, whereby the President is the head of state and head of government.
But unlike the United States, Liberia is a unitary state with one fiscal budget that is controlled and expended by the Executive through the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, but with the approval of the Legislature which makes the appropriation, and monitors the expenditure of the appropriated funds through its oversight responsibilities.
In the last five years, public facilities including hospitals, schools and civil centers which should have been the main drivers of the government's decentralization policy, complained of not receiving all of its approved budget, making the operation of these facilities difficult.
And while these constraints have been reported from time to time by the media and civil society organizations, the U.S. Ambassador's tour has shone the light on the harsh reality of life for civil servants in these leeward counties - public "facilities currently survive on the backs of incredibly dedicated health professionals, making do with whatever they can scrape together."
A Cautious Look
Amb. McCarthy did not mince his words in expressing his feelings and thoughts following his face-to-face encounter with the harsh condition grappling rural dwellers. "In one town administrators look with anticipation mixed with fear at the brand-new, modern hospital that sits vacant, knowing that they can barely keep the existing makeshift facility going, and running the new one will require ten times the resources," he recounted.
He revealed that the United States Government is about to spend a total of over US$40 million constructing Liberia's state-of-the-art National Reference Laboratory (NRL) that, when completed, will require US$3 million to US$4 million a year from the Government of Liberia to operate.
However, he said if the Liberian "Government is failing to deliver statutory appropriations of only US$100,000 to existing hospitals, why would we ever trust annual pledges of US$3 million for the future NRL?"
Since the devastating Ebola outbreak and later the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States, through USAID and the Center for Disease Control (CDC), has supported Liberia in strengthening its health sector.
When built, the NRL will, among othr things, facilitate public health surveillance, contact tracing and case hospitalization, all of which can reduce the risk of disease spreading locally and across borders. National Reference Laboratories are at the pinnacle of diagnostic service provision.
'Mockery to Decentralization'
To address the over centralization of the governance structure and service delivery, the Government of Liberia, under the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf-led administration, launched the decentralization program.
At the core of this landmark program, the government, with support from its partners including UNDP, built service centers and supplied with electricity. The current government, under its Pro Poor Agenda for Prosperity and Development (PAPD) has trumpeted its support to the decentralization program.
Commenting on the status of the Centers, the Ambassador said he visited most of the county Service Centers and discovered that since 2022, none had received any of their budget allocation which is usually around US$13,333.
One of the Centers, he noted, has not printed marriage certificates for four years because the printer broke, and their last allocation was received five years ago, adding that virtually all of them, beautifully electrified over the past two years with UNDP-supplied solar power systems - costing around $35,000 to $40,000 each, and mostly amply staffed by salaried employees in tidy buildings, are reduced to the job of middlemen.
"Limited to forwarding paperwork to Monrovia periodically for time-consuming processing, their plight makes a mockery of decentralization efforts," he said, while added that the one functioning office in every center, the Liberia Revenue Authority (LRA), has representatives who collect duties and regularly forward funds to Monrovia - apparently a one-way street.
Shielding Behind Putin's War?
The Ambassador recounted that as he traveled into the counties, he kept hearing reasons given for the lack of funding from the central government.
"Oh, it is challenging for the government these days." "Oh, Putin's war has made everything more difficult." "Prices have dried up the budgets." "You donor partners must fill the gaps," McCarty quoted the local officials.
Writing further he said: "I wonder if these people are aware that, much to their credit, the LRA has surpassed projections and increased revenues for the past four years, climbing from US$435,682 million in 2019 to US$605,005 million in 2022?"
He said he suspect that the country folks are not aware that the Liberian economy grew by 3.7% in 2022, and he was quite sure they have not been told that the "Legislature has spent more every year for the past three years buttering their own bread, allocating over US$65 million in 2022 for salaries and operations."
In a satirical tune, the outgoing U.S. Ambassador stated that "while hospitals went without, and service centers withered on the vine, the 30 senators and the 73 representatives spent sixty-five million U.S. dollars feathering their own nests."
Questioning the sincerity of pro-poor agenda
The Embassy, he noted, withholds 25% of the salaries of its Liberian employees at the Residence and at the Embassy to pay their legally mandated income tax to the LRA. "Why are the much better-paid representatives and senators not paying a full 25% of their salaries? Why are legislators and ministers, those living on the top of the heap, given annual duty-free imports that deny the LRA much-needed additional revenue?" he as rhetorically.
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"Is there any reason other than the perverted version of the Golden Rule - "those that have the gold, make the rules"?"
He mentioned that U.S. taxpayers spend around US$60 million a year on health care in Liberia, and another US$23 million on education. In comparison, he said the Liberian Legislature that spent US$65 million on itself in 2022 appropriated around US$7.1 million for grants and subsidies to county health facilities and US$2.76 million for operations at basic and secondary education, adding that although, as he discovered, that doesn't mean the funds reached their intended destinations.
On education, he said if the legislature could just appropriate an additional US$10 million a year to primary education - for a country that is tied in last place for average days of school attendance, and an additional US$10 million a year for county hospitals, even the greatest cynics concede that it would make a big difference.
On the road situation, he also noted that Just US$500,000 each per year of actual maintenance for four unpaved roads (Zorzor - Voinjama; Zwedru - Fishtown; Greenville - Barclayville City; and Greenville - Buchanan) would dramatically improve the lives of more than a million of Liberia's poorest citizens, lowering food costs, revolutionizing farm to market access, and eliminating seasonal shortages of life-saving medicines and equipment. The legislature. He added, would still have US$43 million a year to somehow get by.
Questioning whether anyone cares for the Pro poor Agenda, the CDC-led government's flagship program, the Ambassador bluntly stated: "As for me, should the U.S. Congress ask how the elite in Monrovia are treating destitute citizens in the leeward counties, my honest response would have to be, "those citizens are treated with a neglect that borders on contempt." Is this the best that Liberia can do?"
