Monrovia — Former Finance Minister Samuel D. Tweah Jr. has forcefully dismissed claims by Finance and Development Planning Minister Augustine Kpehe Ngafuan that the government has reversed public-sector salary harmonization at key integrity institutions, insisting that any such reversal is "technically and legally impossible."
In a detailed written response circulated publicly on Tuesday, February 3, 2026, Tweah challenged Ngafuan's assertion that harmonization had been undone at institutions such as the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission (LACC) and the General Auditing Commission (GAC).
According to Tweah, both institutions already operated under a single pay system prior to the 2019 reform, meaning they were not harmonized as government officials now suggest. He said the reform merely applied standardized pay grades to enforce equity and transparency.
"Harmonization was not about increasing or decreasing salary," Tweah wrote. "It was about abolishing the dual pay system of basic salary and general allowances and replacing it with a single, transparent income subject to one tax."
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He explained that the policy resulted in salary increases for about 15,000 government workers in its first year, and benefited an estimated 45,000 workers over three years, including University of Liberia instructors whose pay rose by more than 60 percent.
Tweah further argued that reversing harmonization would require a return to the old system of separate basic salaries and discretionary allowances, a step he said the current administration has neither taken nor can realistically implement.
His response followed remarks by Minister Ngafuan during an appearance on the radio program Class Reloaded, in which the finance minister claimed that harmonization had been reversed at several institutions.
"We have reversed harmonization at LACC. This year, in this budget, we have reversed harmonization at the GAC. For the Supreme Court bench and judges, we have also reversed harmonization," Ngafuan stated.
Ngafuan also disclosed that workers of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) are expected to receive pay increases this year, noting that the government is moving cautiously in its wage decisions.
"In this budget, we are moving gingerly. We have moved from a 12-hour economy to an over 18-hour economy," he added during the program.
On development priorities, the finance minister further noted that "Energy is one of the sectors that is going to take all the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) money."
Salary harmonization is a public-sector wage reform aimed at standardizing compensation across government. Prior to the reform, the system was fragmented, with basic salaries paid in Liberian dollars, general allowances often paid in U.S. dollars at the discretion of managers, and wide disparities among workers performing similar functions.
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The core objective of harmonization was to eliminate inequality, reduce discretionary allowances, and restore fiscal order to the government wage system.
The policy was introduced in 2019 under President George Manneh Weah's Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) government, led by then-Finance Minister Samuel D. Tweah Jr., and was supported by the National Standardization and Remuneration Act of 2019, which gave it legal force.
Despite its technical intent, the reform sparked widespread backlash, with many civil servants reporting reduced take-home pay due to taxation and allowance consolidation, prompting protests by teachers, nurses, health workers, and other public employees.
The controversy became highly politicized and was widely viewed as a contributing factor to the CDC's 2023 electoral defeat, with the succeeding Unity Party (UP) government criticizing harmonization while largely maintaining the framework amid fiscal constraints and ongoing legislative review, underscoring that the national debate over salary harmonization remains far from settled.
