Claim: This government has recorded the highest dismissal of civil servants.
Verdict: Unproven, we found no record after reviewing the Civil Servants Annual reports and research done by UNDP.
Full Text: Jefferson Koijee, former Monrovia City Mayor, claimed that More people have been dismissed under Joseph Boakai’s administration than in any other government.
Koijee, who is also the secretary general of the Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC), claims here (11:26), “If you see today, more people are being dismissed in government than any other government before.”
Verification: Koijee was contacted on July 7 and responded on July 12, 2024.
In response, Koijee said the same data collected from the government’s surroundings informed his decision that the Unity Party government dismissed more people than any other government.
“The statistics show that within just six months of the administration, 2042 persons have been dismissed, apart from other agencies like the Ministry of State alone, which speaks to 700 additional, which amounts to 2,742,” he said.
Koijee further notes that, for example, “Check from the available statistics from Monrovia City Corporation, where I last worked; 283 persons have been dismissed, MIA 104, MoE 182, Health Ministry 267, MoT 114, and Justice Ministry 182, amongst others. This is an all-time high record for any government indeed.”
Koijee claimed that the information was verified through the CSA’s ongoing exercise, adding that it is intended to witch hunt and demonize CDCIANS working in government by calling them “ghosts.”
A 2013 annual report states that 25000 employee files are in the system, while 7829 forms still need to be processed.
The report also disclosed that more than 2055 individuals were removed from the payroll
We contacted George Werner, former Director of the CSA, but he declined to respond.
In 2019, the former Director of the CSA, Madam Laurine Wede Johnson, Director General, disclosed that there were 66,538 employees, while the current CSA director, Josiah Joekai, said there were 67,746 personnel across 103 governmental spending entities.
According to Johnson, when she took over, “the government’s wage bill grew from around US$30 million in 2005/06 to US$322 million in 2018/19. For Joekai, he said the average monthly wage expenditure is US$23,543,874.64.”
He further stated that approximately 19,600 civil servants across various government spending entities were put on the government’s centralized payroll in 2019 and do not have the Personnel Action Notice (PAN).
“Similarly, an estimated 20,405 employees possess incomplete PANs from payroll activities from 2019, giving us 40,405 individuals on the payroll whose statuses are not regularized,” said Joekai.
The CSA director said during its cleaning and scrutinizing process that about 40,000 civil servants were incorporated into spending entities between the periods of 2019 -2023.
In this article, Joekai dismisses and suspends staff from the Ministry of Labor and other entities but we have yet to find a record of the number of staff dismissed so far.
We contacted Joekai and his deputy, Darlington Smith, on July 22, 2024, but both of them have yet to respond to our inquiry.
Conclusion: Even though we discovered a record of current dismissals, it is safe to say that it did not include the whole number of employees who were terminated.
Furthermore, we discovered no full number of employees who were fired between 2006 and 2017 or 2018 and 2023. Both Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and George Weah’s governments.
