There is a fundamental debatable concept that Monrovia is the epicenter of political gravity and the seat of government. It is a welcoming city to visitors, investors of multiple diverse backgrounds. It is a city of beauty with distinct features consumed in the best of social glamorous and the home of giant business tycoons both fraudulent and non-fraudulent.
Monrovia is a city that never sleeps, of course perhaps, it is also the accurate domicile of alleged systemic corruption with multiple layers. But sadly, the city has a deep-seated complicated history associated with the fingerprints of ex-slaves, since the city’s embryonic status is named after James Monroe the 5th President of the United States.
Monrovia has a well functionally active working machinery, styled and known as the Monrovia City Corporation (MCC). Monrovia is run solely by a politically motivated City Major from the orbit of the Executive Mansion, a tradition inherited by Liberian presidents with President Boakai being no exception.
It is imperative that MCC lived up to its spectacular name tag as the center of evolutionary activities, programs and projects. This may sound ambitious, but less understandable. MCC first Mayor E.W. Nelson, in 1807 probably couldn’t have perpetuated any advancement due to the dark era Monrovia was born back in the 1800s. But one silent gesture that continued to permeate the MCC’s functional structures up to today’s date is considered beyond all iota of doubts a living but very dirty city in the practical sense of the world. The MCC has become a modern cash cow, gold and diamond mining spot coupled with-its-deep-seated corrupt practices and self-dusty-dignity.
Since the embryonic stage of MCC in memory, its past immediate former Mayor Jefferson Tamba Koijee of the Congress of Democratic Change (CDC), who happened to be the 12th Mayor literally transformed the MCC into a center of social and political jamborees with the collections of unnecessary salaries, wages and benefits with the utilization of convertible fabulous SUVs amid heaps of garbage, stinking city, dead bodies found in garbage around the city, debris littering around sensitive governmental sites to the utmost dismay and displeasure of foreign visitors who were often hit by an unfavorable, but dangerous odor of heaps of garbage, bursts sewages lingering on the streets on Monrovia and part adjacent.
With the appointment and endorsement of Hon. John-Charuk Saah Siafa, the13th Mayor known as Monrovia’s consequential rescue Mayor or the do thing Mayor whose performance has become a perfect storm of unimaginable failure with the same problems witnessed under the then Mayor E. W. Nelson in 1807, yet the problem associated with the heaps of garbage littered everywhere has continued to exist since the 1800s. T
This is a clear indication that all the mayors including Mayor Siafa had no new ideas, no innovation, no bold plan of action, no different initiatives, as a result, Monrovia remains dirty and felty and stink, because former mayors including the current Mayor Siafa are virtually insensitive to the plight of the city with reference to sanitation and the preservation of a very clean city.
The current Mayor Siafa is completely out of touch with modern-day’s sanitation dynamics. Mayor Siafa is no different from his failed predecessors. He has done nothing new. He has shown no bold plan of action. He has no new vision to take the city to its next step
Liberians shouldn’t forget that the rescue govt ran on the mantra of real change-simply to make the difference and do things differently in Liberia to definitively improve where past mayors failed during their tenures. Notably, the lack of enforcement of sanitation laws, persecution of violators, increase in vigorous educational and adequate funding of sanitation programs in Monrovia and part adjacent are battle cry signals which has nothing to do with Siafa showing Monrovians his bold plan of action to deal with sanitation in the next 12 years.
The Monrovia City Corporation Police are also compounding the problems at MCC. According to an unimpeachable source, the City Police officers are undermining the work of the MCC by receiving bribes, tips and compromising the arrests of individuals who abused the sanitation ordinance in exchange for little or nothing. If City Police officers are caught in such habit they should be arrested, persecuted and honorably discharged from the city police force and barred from ever working in any of the security apparatus in Liberia for up to 7 years.
Marketeers who intentionally littered their market grounds unnecessarily should be arrested, processed and sentenced up to 5 years behind bars and be barred from selling in any market in Liberia for 6 years. Parents who often gave their children trash to litter the streets should be arrested along with their child involved.
Both the parents and their child/children should be processed and placed behind bars for up to 5 years for wife and husband and up to 2 years for children\child above the ages ten and above and those above 18 years be sentenced up to 6 years in jail. The City Mayors should be an elected position rather than an appointed position.
The election of city mayors is democratically appropriate to allow Liberians dwelling in their various cities to have a voice in electing their city mayors who will be accountable to their various cities rather than the executive mansion. It is about time to amend the entire MCC’s ordinances to concur with prevailing circumstances wherein an elected city can be removed if he/she performs below expectations through a referendum. All city mayors should be audited after every 6 months, when found guilty, be sent to the Justice Ministry, processed and sentenced for 4-years of said corrupt practices.
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