Labor Minister Justifies Dismissal of 5 Personnel -Says Dismissed Employees Were Roaming About Aimlessly

MONROVIA – The Minister of Labor, Cllr. Cooper W. Kruah, Sr.  has been explaining the rationale behind the termination of the services of five Labour Ministry employees, stating they were going all about impersonating in Gbarpolu Count for pecuniary reason.

In an exclusive interview The Analyst yesterday, the Liberia lawyer said he was making record straight because there may be public outcries in some quarters about the action which was taken because the affected persons were found impersonating as inspectors.

Minister Kruah said: “We took over this Ministry, we noticed that people in the Inspectorate Decision or other employees were just roaming the streets and presenting themselves to business places as inspectors for the Ministry of labor. We continue to receive numerous complaints on a daily basis.”

To curtail that, he added, his administration provided special uniforms to inspectors with each inspector assigned a unique number so that if you went somewhere and misbehaved, you can be tracked easily and face the necessary action.

“That was done to make sure that we curtail all of the complaints,” the Minister said, noting that it was also intended to document irregular exercises of some of the employees, and that has been working very fine.

The Labor Minister also explained further that the second step was to authorize inspections in all counties by team, ensuring that they conduct themselves accordingly.

“Because we cover all the counties, we set up a process to be able to go to the counties for inspection as a team; we only allow teams, not individuals.”

“We put a team together, and a team will comprise an inspector, then we have our project people who do the biometric for our work permit as a separate team,” he said “we also have a team represented from alien registration who issue out the bill; we have cashier from the Liberia Revenue Authority, who received the money. So it’s all a team work now.”

Cllr Kruah divulged that the Labor Ministry has two teams on the field, one in the Western Region that is headed by the Ministry’s inspector general, with all of the persons mentioned; and another team working in Nimba, Yekepa with Mittal Steel, from Ganta to Bong County and to come all the way to Monrovia headed by the Deputy Inspector General with the composition basically the same.”

He continued: “We did this so that nobody will carry out any illegal act in the name of the Ministry. And we did it in a way that before leaving for each county, we will have to do a letter under the signature of the Minister or the Acting Minister to introduce the team to the superintendent of the county so that they will be aware that our team is in the county.”

Further concerning the five dismissed Labor Ministry employees, Minister Kruah indicated that they went to Gbarpolu, not from the inspectorate division, but rather worked different areas of the Ministry.

The Labour Ministry boss said the dismissed employees–Edwin S. Seebo, is a child labor monitor and has nothing to do with inspection. Victor Yoman,  Planning Officer, Samuel S. Sambullah, HIV Focus Person, Bill S. Nanny, Acting Administrative Assistant to an Administrative Officer, and Wilmot Saah, the only inspector amongst them was arrested by immigration officers few months ago for impersonating as an immigration officer and was issued a warning letter after investigation found ground for the letter.

The Minister indicated that Saah was earlier issued a warning letter, pointing out that the fact that Saah joined the group in the malfeasance, he needed no more warning letter but a letter of dismissal.

“Saah had one gone to another group in Monrovia and collected passports and the Deputy Minister for Manpower ordered him to return the passport, he refused to return it,” Cllr Kruah said. “Given his past criminal records, we thought that he doesn’t have to be here any longer.”

He maintained that the central office of the Ministry of Labor was not aware about the action of the dismissed employees until the Gbarpolu Superintendent alarmed on local radio stations that that Labor Ministry personnel were in the county harassing foreigners and beating on them.

“Now, you can’t hear something like that against your ministry and sit there to say ‘let the people go free’. We have to weed out the bad apples amongst us because this is a government that was elected on the mantra of change,” he said.

“We can bring change and find out that someone has violated the norm of their office and said let them go free,” the minister emphasized, adding, “And so we fire them and we are convinced that we fire them for a good cause.”

Sending out a caveat to his employees, Minister Kruah warned: “We will take action if any employee or staff leaves their responsibility or place of work and found doing something that is not assigned to them.”

The Liberian lawyer said he was acting on behalf of the government and “we have to do the best thing for the government so that people will not associate their acts of collection of illegal money for their pockets with all of us.”

He implored all heads of his ministry, including assistant and deputy ministers, to keep surveillance on the workforce assigned to their departments so as to ensure good conduct on the part of employees of the ministry.

According to him, inspectors are expected to work at the direction of the minister and not to go about collecting money for themselves without the government’s authorization, something that has the potential to affect the image of a responsible government.

In a related development, the Labor Minister said there are guidelines that govern the issuance of work permits to foreigners in the country.

“If foreigner comes here to ask for a work permit for a job that we believe a Liberian can do, we deny them,” he said. “Last month, we denied about 60 from working in Liberia because we felt that the jobs they applied for were jobs that can be done by Liberians.”

If employers have a job to be occupied, he noted, “they should advertise it and if it is discovered that there is no Liberian qualified to get the first preference, that’s the only way they should consider foreigners.”

He further said on the other hand if one is a foreign employer and that “information is properly brought to us, there are two things: if it had to do with the payment of wage or salary, either below the minimum wage of which is 143USD per month or so, we’ll make that intervention so that you pay the Liberian our minimum wage of 143 USD and then whatever the difference is over the years we make you to pay it to the Liberian employee.”

He said the Ministry also checks for safety in work places such that if a company has dangerous equipment, “we ask that they provide safety gears for workers.”

“In the case of a foreign employer beat on Liberians, the case should be reported to the immigration for redress,” he said.