MONROVIA — Former Minister of Finance and Development Planning, Samuel D. Tweah Jr., has publicly criticized the Unity Party-led government for what he calls hypocrisy regarding the salary harmonization policy implemented during George Weah’s administration. Tweah served as Finance Minister when the policy was introduced.
The payroll harmonization policy, launched at the start of the CDC administration, aimed to create equity in government pay by reducing or eliminating significant salary disparities through the discretionary assignment and payment of general allowances. This policy led to widespread disenchantment among civil servants due to resulting salary cuts, although the government insisted it was necessary to maintain fiscal balance.
In an op-ed, Tweah accused the current administration of misleading the public about their intentions to reverse the salary harmonization policies. The Unity Party government, in the Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies (MEFP) agreed with the International Monetary Fund, committed to reducing the nominal wage bill from US$305 million in 2023 to approximately US$270 million. This aims to decrease public wage expenses from 7.1 percent of GDP to 6.3 percent. However, Tweah argues that this reduction contradicts the party’s campaign promise to reverse harmonization, as truly reversing harmonization would require returning salary levels to their pre-harmonization state, which would increase the wage bill by more than US$30 million, not reduce it.
“This is not a slight reduction; this is sustaining the trends begun under harmonization,” Tweah wrote. He criticized the government for what he views as a continuation rather than a reversal of the previous administration’s policies.
During the 2023 election campaign, the Unity Party promised to dismantle the harmonization framework, which had been criticized for reducing the salaries of public workers, particularly those in lower government positions, while streamlining the wage structure across the board.
“Harmonization was subjected to propaganda! Some health workers whose salaries were never harmonized were singing ‘you harmonize our pay we harmonize your vote.’ Now when the dust has settled the Government is not even able to give health workers the US$5 million placed in the budget by the CDC government to give them an increase under a new pay scale agreed with them,” Tweah stated.
He further criticized the UP government for failing to reduce the wage bill after its ‘so-called’ civil servants payroll verification identified 6,000 ghost names.
Tweah: “Let it be known that verification of 6,000 civil servants who are supposed to be ‘ghosts’ and turn out some ‘savings’ are really not ghosts and this is causing serious problems for the current Minister of Finance who cannot make sense of the numbers his people are reporting to him. The promised savings ‘da vlah’ as we say in Liberian parlance, and my advice to the Minister is to do a clean sweep away from the false assumptions and politically motivated work of people before him.”
“You cannot politicize everything in the country and may just have to be real about some things!”
After his confirmation hearing by the Senate in early September, Finance Minister Augustine K. Ngafuan promised to thoroughly review the harmonization policy inherited by the Unity Party, with the aim of deriving realistic solutions and ensuring that government employees are paid decently.
“One of my top priorities as Minister of Finance will be to work with the CSA and other government institutions to conduct a thorough review of the policy and its implementation, with the singular purpose of deriving appropriate and realistic solutions to whatever genuine concerns exist,” he stated.
In late September, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a 40-month Extended Credit Facility (ECF) for Liberia worth approximately US$210 million, aimed at assisting Liberia’s reform efforts to address economic imbalances and stimulate private-sector growth.
This arrangement includes an immediate disbursement of about US$5.8 million to support Liberia’s balance of payments. The reform program under this facility focuses on fiscal sustainability and includes measures such as reducing unproductive spending, implementing new tax initiatives like the Value Added Tax (VAT), and increasing investments in infrastructure.
Additionally, the program emphasizes enhancing social spending, particularly in education and health, to support more sustainable growth. Deputy Managing Director Bo Li stressed the importance of strengthening fiscal discipline, enhancing debt management, and adopting new financial legislation to ensure economic stability and reduce poverty.
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