By Allen P. Lablah, payelayleh@gmail.com
Sanniquellie, Liberia- Liberia’s northeastern Nimba County is awash with reports and speculation that the County’s development budget is being drastically reduced, but a top official has dispelled the speculations.
The speculations surfaced in the aftermath of the 2018 County Sitting in County’s capital, Sanniquellie.
But Nimba’s Superintendent for Fiscal Affairs, Saye EL Musa dismissed the reports as mere rumors.
It was said that national government may provide a little over US$300,000, instead of the US$3,000,000 budgeted for in the last County Council Sitting.
Describing the rumors as “false and misleading,” Mr. Musa said that the County’s administration had a meeting with the Government of Liberia to compromise the interest of the county.
Recently, a son of Nimba, Attorney Lawrence Sua reported that the Government of Liberia is to only give US$300,000outof the projected US$3,000,000 budgetedat the county 2018 County Council sitting for various development projects in the county.
According to him, it was due to the present financial crisis President George Weah’s administration is currently faced with.
However, the NimbaCounty Superintendent for Fiscal Affairssaid the administration of the County and its Legislative caucus have engaged the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning to receive the county’s money for projects implementation.
On January 22 2019, the county administration opened bid papers that seek to hire companies that should be implementing eight new projects across the county.
During the process, Peterson Walker, Chairman of the County Project Management Committee (PMC) said the opening of the bids is the gateway to the implementation of the resolution reached by the County Council.
He made the disclosure on Wednesday January 23, 2019 at his Administration Building Office in Sanniquellie.