Increment With Negligible Impact - Civil Servants Lament
By: J. Dominic Farley
Some grieving civil servants in at least five government ministries have sharply reacted to the news of an increment of their salaries from US$50-70. The employees in their discontentment vented out that the recently announced increment is not reflecting what they called existing reality in the country.
Cross section of the aggrieved civil servants, who walked into the offices of Public Agenda yesterday lamented that the increment must commensurate with contemporary economic realities; and anything short of that, according to them is a mockery and sham.
‘The $70 increment is negligible and irrelevant to the ever increasing prices of basic commodities in the country” Barclay Toe, the leader of the aggrieved employees noted.
The Director of the Bureau of the Budget recently announced in a news conference that civil servants will get US$70 monthly in the new draft budget recently submitted to the 52 nd National Legislature.
Augustine Ngafuan made the resented disclosure following the submission of a draft budget of US$276,767,955 last week. Our reporter who talked to employees from Internal Affairs, Finance, Transport, Education, and Planning & Economic Affairs said most of them expressed dissatisfaction over the news of the increment.
The employees, in unison threatened that at the appropriate time, they will respond but failed to explain in what fashion their respond will come.
The government usually boasts of improvement in the country's revenue but the reality is yet to be reflected in the lives of ordinary Liberians, some of them stated.
High profile officials at the Finance Ministry observed that signs on the horizon are terrifying. The official, who begs not to be named in print, asserted, “It is through freedom of speech that leaders can effectively change their policies to suit their people if they are sincere. He noted that report of hardship in the country is alarming and these are not good signs for the government, the official pointed out.
