Just in the last seven months, scores of Liberians met on the public job by the Unity Party Government have since returned home to dear families emptyhanded, resorting to playing ludo and checker games. From the Ministry of State for Presidential Affairs where nearly eight hundred citizens were put down to the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Finance as well as other agencies and commissions, thousands of Liberians who were employed in the public sector are no more “putting food on the table” for families. As if to make matters worse, the Government through the Ministry of Health announced it would be retrenching hundreds of employees.
According to official reasons provided, most of the layoffs at the government’s ministries, agencies and commissions if not all are a result of employees being placed on ‘supplementary payroll’, prolonged absence from work, ghost names, ‘unverified’ persons, lacking personnel action notice (PAN) amongst other reasons. And without giving much thought and scholarship to the social, economic and cultural implications of all the “investigations” justifying the actions, the Unity Party has once again put itself on record for being the most insensitive to the plight of Liberians in the public sector. As per vibrations coming from the Civil Service Agency (CSA) where an extremely zealous partisan leadership is managing the public wage headache, indications are clear that tens of thousands of Liberians will soon join millions of their unfortunate compatriots in the valley of joblessness.
It can be recalled that upon taking the realm of political power in 2006, the Unity Party instituted its infamous “downsizing and rightsizing” policy, which clawed out of the civil service thousands of Liberians—a policy widely credited for making Liberia one of the poorest and highest unemployment countries in the world at the time. Another backlash of the policy to remember was the rise in crimes and instability, when highway and community hijackings roared with criminal gangs like “11 Brothers”, “Isakaba” and others that tormented citizens and disturbed the peace of the country.
This is why, listening to the proponents of the current waves of layoff in Government, we refuse to accept the justifications of bloated civil service and the drive for a small and effective government. We so refuse to accept the stated reasons for the layoff not only because we once heard this same rhetoric again, back in 2006, 2007 and all the reasons, including cleansing the bureaucracy that ended up being “substitution by elimination”. This nation witnessed how the compulsory exodus of civil servants led to the inundation of Government by pro-UP Liberians and how the risk posed by the renewal of such a policy constitute a clear and present danger.
We wonder why the political administration of Liberia, particularly every Unity Party government, often takes pleasure to increasing the country’s unemployment rate by laying off public workers. Yes, public sector is may not be ideal destination for employment growth. Private sector is. But knowing full well that governments over time have done absolutely nothing to create conditions for private-sector job creation, where do Liberians in the meantime find livelihood? Should they die of hunger and want? Do these public officials who are pontificating “small and effective” government know the typical size of Liberian households and how their “dis-employment” policy that affects Liberian breadwinner also spread out to scores of others?
How come a “rescue mission” has forgotten the implications of their actions – the horribly biting financial difficulties imposed on fellow citizens, the soaring brain drain it creates, the social stigma it spreads, complicated social unrest it ignites, and the political instability it fosters. Or don’t they care once their egos are cool?
The time to these reigning leaders of Liberia to sober up and suppress ego is now; for no one needs to be an ace bureaucrat to know that huge risk that Unity Party Government is taking in its unrestrained and unremorseful droves of civil servants’ retrenchment owe far-reaching dastardly implications.
We hope common sense will prevail soon for the good of collective security and social quiet of the country. Stop the massive layoff, please!
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