-Grand Kru Rep proposes removal of current Liberian banknotes from the market
-Speaker Bohfal Chambers position comes under fire
By Mark N. Mengonfia
It is evident that Liberia is in a serious economic crisis with the increase in prices of basic commodities and the uncontrollable rise in the foreign exchange rate against the Liberian dollar.
With the exchange rate now approaching 160 Liberian dollar to one US dollar, which is at an all-time high, a member of the House of Representatives from Grand Kru County is calling for the replacement of the current LD banknotes on the marke.t
Many ordinary Liberians finding it increasingly difficult to get a proper meal a day, with the unemployment rate rising by the day, thus many citizens continue to look up to their government to intervene and ease the hardship.
The country’s economy has been overstressed long before the inception of President George Manneh Weah as head of state of the country, financial experts have said.
But the stress on the country’s economy has turned into what Liberians are now calling “economy crisis” and has caught the attention of Liberians, including stakeholders in the business sector who have been finding means to settle the ongoing problem.
Grand Kru County’s District #1 Representative, Nathanial Bhaway wants the current Liberian dollar banknotes in circulation to be withdrawn.
Rep. Bhaway said: “I think it will be good for us to take all the money from the market and print new once,”
According to him, ordinary Liberians are suffering adding that the situation needs to be remedy as soon as possible to alleviate the stress that citizens of the country are now faced with.
He indicated that people of his district most of the times call and ask by saying “you people in the House here what you are doing to end this problem?”
The Grand Kru County lawmaker indicated that as it has been subjected by many Liberians, the best way the matter will be settle is by putting a new banknote that will be properly regulated by the Central Bank of Liberia.
The Lawmaker said the ongoing financial and economic crisis is overwhelming the country, thus causing Speaker Bhofal Chambers to request that Liberia begins to use the American Dollar as it legal tender.
But Speaker Chambers’ statement did not lend down on a smooth surface, but has received condemnations from nearly all corners of the Liberian society.
The difference between Rep. Bhaway’s recommendation and that of the Speaker’s suggestion is that the Rep. Bhaway is suggesting that the county’s financial management team should remove the current notes.
He said the replacement banknots will be properly regulated while the Speaker recommended the withdrawal of the Liberian dollar and the adaptation of the United States dollar as Liberia’s “single currency.”
Speaker Chambers recently pointed accusing fingers at former President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who he said toward the end of her 12-year tenure could be liken to a ‘Soviet-style economic and militarily fashioned scenario that compeled compliance on economic activities.’
Speaker Chambers used the word, Gulag he said was short form for the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies that the Soviet prison system started as a means of isolating “counter-revolutionary elements.”
Another person who has publicly disagreed with the position of the ‘learned’ Speaker of the House of Representative is Isaac W. Nyenabo, former Senate President Pro-Tempore of the Liberian Senate and Liberia’s current Ambassador to the European Union.
Mr. Nyenabo speaking from Belgium on a local radio talk show on Tuesday indicated that the position of the Speaker is nothing to be welcomed by Liberians.
He said that periods during which such things could happen were between the 1800s-1900s and not in this time and age.
“When the United States decides to withdraw its money from the market, what happens to Liberia?” the former Senate President Pro Tempore asked.
Mr. Nyenabo pointed out that Speaker Chambers’ Suggestion is not the best thing to be done to get the country out of its current economic woes.