With the elections just days away, there have been multiple radio appearances by political party stalwarts hoping to either continue or unseat President George Weah’s administration.
Former Vice President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s Unity Party’s Ambassador, Joseph Boakai, is one of the 20 candidates running in the October 10 elections.
Amos Tweh, the party’s secretary general, made these claims.
- About 70,000 civil servants’ salaries were harmonized. (1:54:20)
- In 2018, this government said they would move 1 million people out of poverty. (1:55:08)
Verification:
In 2019, the George Weah-led government began the contentious process of salary harmonization.
According to the administration, the goal was to ensure payroll parity by paying government employees based on their employment grade.
Salary Harmonization (SH) means equal work for equal pay across governments or the same position for the same salary. Salary harmonization mainly focuses on equity on the payment scale or bridging salary disparities and/or imbalances.
The General Auditing Commission audit discovered that the goal of harmonization was not achieved and that the government still maintains an unfair salary structure
Dell Francis Wreh, Executive Director of the Liberian Macroeconomic Policy Analysis Center (LIMPAC) at the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning (MFDP), disclosed at the Ministry of Information and Cultural Affairs press briefing disclosed that over 66,500 government employees were harmonized.
According to Wreh, the harmonization process did not sack anyone, as is being speculated, but rather corrected the ills and weaknesses in the allowance system, citing that the harmonization calibrated the government’s payroll into a single unit.
It can be recalled that the former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee now Deputy Speaker, Cllr. J. Fonati Koffa, said 10,000 civil servants experienced a cut in their salaries.
Conclusion: The claim by Tweh that 70,000 civil servants’ salaries were harmonized is partly true, as in 2019, director Wreh disclosed that over 66,500 government employees have had their salaries harmonized.
Verification 2: The Pro-Poor Agenda for Prosperity and Development (PAPD), a five-year development plan by the George Weah administration, states that the government will provide greater income security to an additional one million Liberians.
The PAPD will also reduce absolute poverty by 23 per cent across 5 out of 6 regions through sustained and inclusive economic growth driven by scaled-up investments in agriculture, infrastructure, human resource development, and social protection.
The PAPD says by 2023, greater income security will be provided to an additional one million Liberians to reduce the proportion of people living in absolute poverty.
According to the PAPD, poverty will be reduced in the Southeastern Region B, from 81.3% to 58.3%; in the North Central Region, from 68.5% to 45.5%; in the North Western Region, from 58.6% to 35.6%; in Southeastern Region A, from 57.2% to 34.2%; and in the South Central Region, from 57.2% to 34.2%.
Conclusion 2: Even though the Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) PAPD says that by 2023, greater income security will be provided to an additional one million Liberians to reduce the proportion of people living in absolute poverty. It is Partly True that the PAPD States that one million Liberians will be taken from poverty.
