Staff at the government office responsible for establishing Liberia's war and economic crimes court must surrender their personal phones at the entrance every morning under an order that took effect Monday. This policy leaves employees without private communication during work hours. Employees say the order violates their rights and makes the office difficult to operate, and none of them knows what caused it.
Employees who spoke to The Liberian Investigator on condition of anonymity said they were given no explanation before the memorandum landed. They said they fear dismissal if they object, and that the restriction has left them afraid to raise conditions at the office with anyone outside the building.
"He often threatens us with dismissal because he claims we're not civil servants. How would you ask your employees to come to work on Sunday at 7 am? There's no compensation for it. Then he would say if you don't come, your contract would be terminated," one employee said of Executive Director Jallah A. Barbu
A second employee said Barbu "does what he wants the way he wants" and has "a very bad working relationship with his employees." A third, describing the hours the staff keep, said the office runs from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and sometimes until 7:30 p.m. "Everyone's schedule in this building is based on our ED's schedule," the employee said.
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The order they are objecting to is an Aug. 10 memorandum signed by Barbu and addressed to all heads of department and all staff, effective the day it was written. "Staff are required to place their personal phones in the cupboard at the entrance of the building when they report to work," it says, adding that custodians of the cupboard "have been assigned and all are required to take note." It ties the prohibition to a closed user group phone system, the CUG, which the office is putting in place for official communication.
Asked in an interview with The Liberian Investigator at his office on Tuesday whether the prohibition applied to him, his deputies, consultants, and international partners, Barbu said it bound everyone. "Nobody above the rule, nobody," he said. In the same answer, he set out an exception, stating that no one in the building may load credit onto the CUG lines except staff at the management level.
The Liberian Investigator obtained a second memorandum, dated Aug. 11 and also signed by Cllr. Barbu, that exempts 18 people from the phone restriction, beginning with Barbu himself. Titled "Exemption on Phone Restriction," it permits all directors, heads of department and staff with special needs to bring their personal phones into the building and requires everyone else to comply.
The stated reason is the need to reach people the CUG does not support. The table of names runs from Barbu as executive director through the directors of anti-corruption, research and records, and finance and accounting, the associate directors for gender and youth and for media and public affairs, the chief of office staff, the human resource manager, the ICT manager, the program manager, a supervisor in the psychosocial unit, the executive secretary and procurement manager, the security supervisor, the chief driver and a transitional justice adviser to the executive director.
Employees said they also believe calls made on their Orange carrier can be traced back to them, which is why they would not speak to any journalist or authority figure about the 'bad labor practices' at the office over the phone. They alleged that Cllr. Barbu provides legal services to Orange Liberia, therefore, giving him access to call logs.
On what prompted the order, Cllr. Barbu said it was not a leak. "It's not because somebody leaked information," he said, adding that information leaking had always been there. "We're not targeting anybody." He said a phone had gone missing in the building on the day of the interview, that outsiders come in for meetings almost daily, and that a stranger had previously been stopped on the road outside and brought back after a visitor's phone disappeared. He said the office keeps CCTV cameras and was reviewing the footage.
He said official business should not run through private phones or private email, that every staff member has an office email address, and that the CUG removes the excuse of having no credit because the office pays for the lines around the clock. He said the office is building systems that will be handed over when the court itself stands up. He compared the arrangement to the United States Embassy, where visitors surrender phones at the entrance, and to a hotel switchboard that routes calls to rooms.
Asked whether the Ministry of Labour or the office's legal unit had been consulted before the order, Barbu said there was no reason to. Staff at the office are not civil servants, he said, but contract employees on a project, and any of them who disagreed could ask for their contract and act on it. That is the same distinction the employees say is used against them.
The office's own Human Resource Policy and Staff Regulations manual, effective Jan. 1, 2026, gives it weight. Regulation #2 grants the executive director full authority over appointment, assignment and separation of staff, and, under a heading of special and inherent authority, allows him to appoint, reassign or dismiss staff "without adherence to standard procedures" and to take immediate administrative action in exceptional circumstances, notwithstanding other provisions of the regulations.
²The stated limiting principles are good faith decision-making and proportionality. Regulation #7 permits summary dismissal without full procedure when institutional integrity is threatened, security concerns are clear and present, or trust is irreparably broken. The dispute resolution section states that a review panel is advisory only and has no power to overturn the executive director's decisions, and that final authority for all decisions rests with him. Regulation #10 provides that the policy may be amended through internal memoranda and circulars issued by the executive director, which is the mechanism the phone order used.
The manual specifies office hours from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays. A July 11 memorandum from human resources manager Kulubah D. Tokpa informed all staff that the executive director had instructed everyone to report no later than 7 a.m. on July 12, a Sunday, "because there are many tasks requiring urgent attention."
Barbu gave a different account of that day. He said the office met on July 12 to prepare for a delegation's departure for Rwanda on July 13, that the start was set at 9 a.m. rather than earlier because transportation is difficult in the mornings, and that the work finished around 1 p.m. He said the preparation was necessary so the office would keep running while the team was away. Asked about overtime, he said the office does not pay it and can provide transportation instead. Under the manual, only the executive director is, as a general rule, entitled to privileges such as fuel, scratch cards, security guards, and office cash, with other staff receiving allowances on a case-by-case basis at his approval.
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Cllr. Barbu repeatedly brought up during the interview how this newspaper obtained the memorandum, asking three times and requesting that the question and the reporter's refusal to answer be printed. He said the memoranda are public in any case, that the office posts its documents on its website, and that he has taught constitutional freedom of speech and understands the Freedom of Information Act. "We'll be open. We'll be transparent," he said of his instructions to staff when he arrived at the office.
When a reporter for this newspaper arrived for the interview, security personnel told him he could not enter with his laptop or his phones. Told that he needed a phone to record the interview and take photographs, the officers said the office would record it and take the pictures and share them with him. He was allowed in with his phones only after insisting he needed them to reach his questions.
Barbu also said the office is arranging drug tests for its staff through the Ministry of Health, that it hoped testing would begin before the weekend and that interns would be excluded, with their parents informed. "We don't force any staff," he said, before adding that a staff member who declined would be considered out of line with government policy and could not be kept, which he described as grounds for terminating a contract.
Asked how the phone restriction would affect victims, witnesses and complainants who might contact staff directly, Barbu said the mandate contains no such provision. He said the office does not yet take testimony and that its mandate under Executive Orders 131, 148 and 164 is to lead the establishment of the war and economic crimes court and the national anti-corruption court and to develop the mechanisms for their operation, including providing technical guidance to the Legislature as it considers the bill.
