PHOTO: Jemah Sharpe, BFI Coordinator
By Augustine Octavius, augustineoctavius@gmail.com
A youth-driven organization, the Better Future Initiative (BFI) has stepped its awareness aimed at increasing students’ participation in the budget formulation and execution in Liberia.
The campaign, under the theme: “Know How The Liberian National Budget Works and Get Involved,” is sponsored by the World Bank through the Non State Actor Department at the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning.
Speaking at the ceremony to launch the campaign, the Program Coordinator of the Better Future Initiative, Jemah Sharpe explained that the campaign is intended to increase students’ participation in the formulation and execution of the national budget.
According to her, this campaign will enable students to understand how the national budget is generated; and it is equally important that you form part on the usage of the national coffer.
Miss Sharpe said that the campaign has already been held at the AME Zion University, the Salvation Army Polytechnic and the campaign will also be taken to the University of Liberia and other higher institutions in Montserrado County.
Delivering a lecture during the ceremony, a student at the Louis Arthur Grimes School of Law, Josephus Zogar, called on young people to right the wrongs in the formulation and execution of the national budget.
According to him, young people should not sit idly and allow politicians to decide on the usage of the national budget because anything that is done with the national budget has direct or indirect effect on the entire nation.
Josephus Zogar
Mr. Zogar thanked the Better Future Initiative for bridging the gaps between the students who have knowledge and those who do not have the knowledge about the national budget.
He expressed the hope the students will use the knowledge acquired from the lectures to reach out to their colleagues so they can have an ideal about the national budget.
During the lectures, several students have a number of recommendations aimed at increasing the national budget and reducing the dependency on support from donor and international partners.
Some of the students recommended among other things for the government to increase the support for agriculture so as to reduce the huge among spent of the importation of rice and other basic commodities.
The students also proposed the need for the government to in the allotment for education so as to increase the enrollment of more students in higher institutions of learning.
Others suggested that the need to increase the purse for health in the wake of the outbreak of the corona virus in Liberia and the reports of other deadly disease in the West African region.
The lectures are expected to be extended to the campuses of higher institutions of learning in Montserrado County shortly.