PHOTO: Min. Samuel Tweah
By Augustine Octavius, augustineoctavius@gmail.com
Liberia’s Minister of Finance and Development Planning has made another promise towards promoting transparency and accountability in the operations of the CDC government, which is in its fourth year in power.
Minister Samuel Tweah has said the Liberian government will continue to vigorously initiate reforms in all integrity and anti-graft institutions, in order to save public funds regardless of the political consequences.
The Finance Minister was speaking at the start of a two-day transparency and integrity collaborative forum organized by the Internal Auditing Agency for auditors from all government’s integrity institutions in Monrovia on Wednesday, July 28, 2021.
He added that this is reason that the Internal Auditing Agency should ensure that no government ministry, commission and bureau is allowed spend without ascertain the importance of spending is for public good.
According to Mr. Tweah, there is a need to review the mandate given to the IAA in order for the entity to be robust because no ministry, commission or agency should spend without internal auditor ascertaining its importance for the Liberian people.
The Finance Minister pointed out that the IAA can generate its financial resources without government support because intricacy that the agency brings in attracting trust of the public in public financial sector.
“Most of the things that the government is trying to do in the last three years is to restructure, re-orientate and re-organize the integrity and anti graft institutions, because some of the laws that established these entities go for decays,” Minister Tweah pointed out.
According to him, over the last 15 years, about 25 million United States Dollars was spent in addressing the huge wage bill of the government without success because Liberia’s international partners were complaining.
Not worried about political consequences in effecting salary harmonization
“When this President came to power,” he went on, “he demonstrated the political will by giving the instruction for us to clean the entire system, harmonizing the salaries , which subsequently yielded into the slashing about 32 million United States Dollars to other allotments,” the Liberian Finance Minister added.
He said the manner in which salaries were been paid to government employees was undermining the civil service because some people of the same qualifications were not making the same salaries.
“Any new policy is to change the old ones and you think that some people will not be angry?” Minister Tweah asked.
“You are waisting your time. There will be anger generated and there will happiness in some quarters; we are not worried about the polictical consequenscies as a result of the changes. Harmonization will go down in history as one of the major achievements of this government becaue we have been able to slash 32 million United States Dollars and re-apportion it,” the Finance Minister boasted.
Minister Tweah maintained that the IAA auditors assigned should have an idea on how any money is spent at the various agencies, ministries and commissions as this institution auditors first gate keepers before any money is spent
He assued the internal auditors that they will be empowered with the necessary laws for easy access in doing their jobs without hinderance
Branding IAA and Gov’t Integrity institutions
In remarks, the Acting Director General of the Internal Auditing Agency, Clarence Williams said the main objective of the forum is to brand the IAA along with relevant government agencies and to take the institution to the people.
He explained that another objective of the forum is intended to create awareness about the IAA to various government entities and in the 15 political sub divisions so as to make intervention on how they make disbursement of their allotment, government and donor funds.
IAA boss Clarence Williams
“This is intended to assist them in the execution of their respective budgets in order to prevent the problems during reporting on their expenditure and auditing,” he said
“With the limitation on the availability of fund,” he went on, “the government cannot afford to allow the little resources to be lost to corruption or misapplication.”
Participants at the forum
According to Mr. Williams, as a part of the rebranding, the IAA will be taking this awareness on management and controls to various agencies and superintendents in the counties.
The IAA boss maintained that it is through these discussions that his agency along with the various ministries, agencies and commissions that his entity was able remove ghost names from government payroll
According to him, the forum, under the theme: “Taking IAA to the People,” brought together participants from various integrity and anti graft institutions in the country.
The forum is expected to end with the development of a number of recommendations aimed at accelerating the work of internal auditors at various government ministries, agencies and commissions.