United states ambassador to Liberia Michael McCarthy through the embassy near Monrovia has released a rather ‘strong worded’ statement questioning the Weah led government refusal to fund activities in rural Liberia.
In a statement issued late Monday, Mr. McCarthy during his recent trip to four rural counties he was “startled and deeply troubled” to encounter multiple county hospitals that received not one penny of what they were promised in the 2022 budget year. He further added that hospitals on which lives depend, where outbreaks are prevented and suffering is alleviated, did not receive any portion of the US$100,000 or more appropriated by the legislature for them to operate.
Referencing a recent media report with Tellowoyan Memorial Hospital in Lofa County, Amb. McCarthy further maintained that these facilities currently survive on the backs of incredibly dedicated health professionals, making do with whatever they can scrape together.
According to him the blocking of resources to health and other public facilities in is so complete that it must be institutional and the lack of any alarm being raised indicates a syndicate involving players at the legislature, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
“In one town, administrators look with anticipation mixed with fear at the brand-new, modern hospital that sits vacant, knowing that they can barely keep the existing makeshift facility going, and running the new one will require ten times the resources”, Ambassador McCarthy adds.
U.S. gives millions to Liberia
The United States Embassy statement further maintain that the Government of United states is about to spend a total of over US$40 million constructing Liberia’s state-of-the-art National Reference Laboratory (NRL) that, when completed, will require US$3 million to US$4 million a year from the Government of Liberia to operate and if Government of Liberia is failing to deliver statutory appropriations of only US$100,000 to existing hospitals doubts that if the same administration would ever spent $3 mllion to $4 million for the future NRL.
‘No funding for county Service Center’
The U.S Embassy statement quoted Ambassador McCarthy as saying that while the visiting most of the County Service Centers, and in 2022, NONE had received any of their budget allocation (usually around US$13,333).
“One of the Centers has not printed marriage certificates for four years because the printer broke, and their last allocation was received five years ago.
Virtually all of them, beautifully electrified over the past two years with UNDP-supplied solar power systems (costing around $35,000 – $40,000 each), and amply staffed by (mostly) salaried employees in tidy buildings, are reduced to the job of middlemen.
Limited to forwarding paperwork to Monrovia periodically for time-consuming processing, their plight makes a mockery of decentralization efforts. The one functioning office in every center, the Liberia
Revenue Authority (LRA), has representatives who collect duties and regularly forward funds to Monrovia – apparently a one-way street” Ambassador McCarthy further explain in a statement.
Budget increment without development
Ambassador McCarthy said so far there has been no concrete reason was given for the refusal of funding to rural counties.
“It was striking that the further I went from Monrovia, the more elaborate and explicit were the reasons given for the lack of funding from the central government. “Oh, it is challenging for the government these days.” “Oh, Putin’s war has made everything more difficult.” “Prices have dried up the budgets.” “You donor partners must fill the gaps.”
He wonder why LRA has surpassed projections and increased revenues for the past four years, climbing from US$435,682 million in 2019 to US$605,005 million in 2022 but there has been no funding to run county facilities
“ I suspect the country folk don’t know that the Liberian economy grew by 3.7% in 2022. And I am quite sure they have not been told that the legislature has spent more every year for the past three years buttering their own bread, allocating over US$65 million in 2022 for salaries and operations”, he stated further.
“ That’s correct – while hospitals went without, and service centers withered on the vine, the 30 senators and the 73 representatives spent sixty-five million U.S. dollars feathering their own nests.
We withhold 25% of the salaries of our Liberian employees at the Residence and at the Embassy to pay their legally mandated income tax to the LRA.
Why are the much better-paid representatives and senators not paying a full 25% of their salaries? Why are legislators and ministers, those living on the top of the heap, given annual duty-free imports that deny the LRA much-needed additional revenue? Is there any reason other than the perverted version of the Golden Rule – those that have the gold, make the rules”?
U.S. Taxpayers’ money not yielding result?
U.S. taxpayers spend around US$60 million a year on health care in Liberia, and another US$23 million on education, but according to the Embassy the Liberian legislature that spent US$65 million on itself in 2022 appropriated around US$7.1 million for grants and subsidies to county health facilities and US$2.76 million for operations at basic and secondary education.
