A misunderstanding with the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning over the payment of their monthly retirement wages and retired soldiers of the disbanded 1990s Armed Forces of Liberia continues to rumble on.
The leadership of the disbanded soldiers of the AFL has accused the Comptroller General of Liberia of putting them against the CDC-led government.
The Chairman of the executive committee, Retired Major Alex Geor, said Liberia’s Comptroller General, Jangar Kowo has embarked on plans aimed at denying soldiers the opportunity to take loans in place of their pensions.
Addressing a news conference in Monrovia on Monday, Major Geor claimed that Mr. Kowo’s ploy is intended to deny thousands of ex- soldiers residing outside Monrovia to have access to their pensions.
According to Major Geor because of the smallness of the money, most of the soldiers who are very old and residing in rural Liberia usually take loans covering six months and one year.
“If Jangar Kowo wants to create problems for us, we will ensure that we make problems for before he can make things difficult for me and these soldiers,” he told the news conference
“This is our government and we do not intend to create problem for our own government, but we will not draw back if Jangar Kowo wants to bring problems between this government and us,” he warned.
Based on this background, “we are appealing to President George Weah and Presidential Affairs Minister, Nathaniel McGill to intervene in order to avert this eminent danger’” he said
Reacting to claims, the Comptroller General Jangar Kowo, claimed that government introduced the face-to-face payment, because one person would signs for more than 200 checks whenever AFL pensions checks are available.
According to Mr. Kowo, the government wants to know who are still living, sick and dead, in order to identify ghosts from the real AFL pensioners.
The Comptroller General maintained that the Finance Ministry has put in place a mechanism through which those in loans will be identified as the disbanded AFL leadership and the Ministry have agreed for three months before the implementation.
“It is a part by the Liberian government to embark on payroll reform because we have saved millions of dollars since we initiated this measure,” he noted.
“This is a government’s mandate to clear to payroll out of ghost names but we are not intending to transfer their checks to the bank or pay them through mobile money,” he concluded. Report by Augustine Octavius