Monrovia — Ex-Finance Minister Samuel D. Tweah has sent an open challenge to the ruling Unity Party to cancel the much-publicized harmonization policy they once criticized during the regime of former President George Weah.
During Weah's regime, the civil servant salary harmonization process reduced salaries for many government workers, while others' salaries, including doctors and nurses were increased, and others were forcibly retired.
This policy was one of the most contentious issues going into the 2023 elections as the Unity Party projected to Liberians that the former Liberian leader was insensitive to the plights of Liberians by reducing their salaries.
Speaking at OK FM, a Monrovia-based radio station during his first radio appearance after his long stay outside the country, Tweah said before the CDC could assume power in 2018, Unity Party did a reform to increase every Civil Servant's salary. However, the reform process affected only five ministries and left the rest of the entities undone causing serious inequality in salaries.
"For some reasons, one morning the Unity Party government decided to do a reform. They took the salary of the Ministry of Finance, Civil Service Agency, Foreign Ministry. There were five entities of government, they took the salaries up, then they stopped, he said.
Mr. Tweah told the Unity Party government that the criticism of the harmonization policy they proffered in the last six years should be theoretical, adding that the current government should have erased the policy in its first 100 days in office.
"If you want to criticize our harmonization policy, don't do it in theory. You are now the government, take every Civil Servant to hundred percent now. Currently, we have a wage bill structure where people are still significantly underpaid. Let this government bring everybody to a desired level," Tweah said.
He added: "We stand proud of our record and we are asking the current government -We know that they cannot change the system we have built. They criticized the system but in nine months, has the system been changed? Let forget about their criticism, they are the government now, what can they do to the system? What they are even doing will make it worse."
Fifteen Thousand Civil Servants Get Pay Rise, Seven Got Pay cut
Unity Party, by then the leading opposition party, criticized the CDC government for the harmonization program that cut the income of civil servants.
Former Minister said though the harmonization program did not touch every Civil Servant, more government workers received pay raises than pay cuts.
"In terms of pay rising, we took people up, 15,000 of them paid up and 7,000 down; we cannot take all of the Civil Servants up. That was the claim I made at that point significantly because of revenue difficulty, we will do it on a gradual basis," Tweah said.
He added: "We did not succeed in bringing every Civil Servant up because we did not have resources. This government cannot. It was not designed to benefit everybody because it was not possible to benefit everybody."
"The people who went up were the people who were under the water. Immigration people were making US$ 45. I don't think you want them to make US$ 45 while other civil servants make US$ 150," he said.
CDC Puts People on the Payroll
Adding up, the former Finance Minister said although the CDC government added people on the payroll, the government still achieved seven million in cut from the harmonization policy.
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He disclosed that in 2009, the payroll of the Unity Party-led administration at the time was US$ 109 million annually but later raised to more than US$ 200 million.
"Do you know the government wage when they were leaving in December of 2017? It was US$ 289 million a year. So, who put the wage up? Is it CDC?" he asked.
Tweah added: "When we got in, CDC put around three to four thousand people on the payroll, I will not tell you that we didn't put people on the payroll. However, one of the things we did, we found saving to absorb them. We achieved seven million cuts."
"Ministers were making seven thousand plus United States dollars, we brought ministers down to US$ 5,800. The UP government is now taking ministers back to US$ 7,500," he said.
