IN KEEPING WITH the new Energy Regulatory Law, Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf on Monday named Ms. Angelique Weeks as Acting Chair of the Liberia Electricity Regulatory Commission. Ian Yahp and Foday Sackor were also named as Commissioners respectively.
WEEKS ALSO happens to be the Chair of the Liberia Telecommunications Authority (LTA), an agency tasked with the regulatory and statutory responsibility to ensure a vibrant telecommunications sector in Liberia.
HER PROJECTED end of tenure is October 2017.
HER APPOINTMENT COMES just days after the appointment Dr. Ophelia Weeks as President of the University of Liberia. Previously, another Weeks, Antoinette headed the Ministry of Public Works, performing poorly while drawing criticisms from international stakeholders for her brash and rather irrational style and ineptitude as an administrator.
DESPITE MOUNTING concerns over her failed tenure at Public Works, Antoinette was rewarded by President Sirleaf with a nomination to the lucrative post as Commissioner for Infrastructure at the ECOWAS Commission.
KIMMIE WEEKS, another relative is Chairman of the Board at the Liberia Water and Sewer Corporation while Milton Weeks, Anglique’s brother, is Governor of the Central Bank of Liberia.
BESIDES THE WEEKS, another family repeatedly benefiting from Sirleaf’s appointments are the McClains: Dr. Rudolph McClain, previously served as head of the National Oil Company of Liberia; the late Edward Mcclain, was Minister of State for Presidential Affairs until his death, and Charles McClain, Deputy Minister of Agriculture for Planning and Development. Mr. Ian Yahp, who serves on the board of the Liberia Electricity Corporation and appointed recently as a commissioner to the LERC is regarded as the late Edward McClain’s ‘favorite nephew.
AS HEAD OF THE LTA, Ms. Weeks and her fellow commissioner have been repeatedly slammed, not only for their massive US$12,000 salaries but equally for their flamboyant travels, in most cases, according to sources, US500 per day.
IT IS ENOUGH ENTICEMENT for any chair or commissioner to google trips for technology officials and rack up massive travel incentives and putting more burden on taxpayers.
SADLY, THE LTA’s performance has been dismal. Since 2009, Ms. Weeks have been at the helm of a telecommunications sector that is lagging far behind its peers in the West Africa sub region. The LTA has failed to bring in spectrum monitoring machines, has been poorly regulating the sector and wasted millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money renting office spaces over the past few years. Even more troubling, the LTA’s website www.lta.gov.lr is poorly managed and operated and does not represent the face of a telecommunications regulator. The LTA has also been criticized for poorly tracking the licenses of cellular operators.
SIMPLY PUT, the LTA under Ms. Weeks has been disgraceful.
THAT SHE IS BEING rewarded by President Sirleaf with yet another appointment to the influential electricity regulatory commission, speaks volume about the seriousness President Sirleaf attaches to one of her core legacy objectives and one which has drawn the most criticisms of her eleven years as President, a pledge to bring “small light today” and “big light tomorrow”.
THE PROPOSED ACT of the LERC establishes the legal and regulatory framework for the generation, transmission, distribution and retail sale of electricity and for import and export. This will create an enabling environment for private sector investment in the energy sector in Liberia.
WHAT PUZZLES US is the potential for conflicts that comes with Ms. Weeks appointment. Section 13.3 of the act is clear: LERC shall initially reside within the Ministry (Lands, Mines and Energy) for administrative purposes only. LERC shall be independent with respect to its budget, management, staffing and in the exercise of its duties and authorities. Notwithstanding – its independent role. LERC shall work closely with the Ministry during the transition period described in Section 13.6, to ensure that the transfer of authority is conducted in a smooth manner and that employee transfers, if any, are coordinated to serve the needs of both LERC and the Ministry.”
THE SECTION also stipulates: “The LERC shall be an independent agency and shall act independently from any regulated entity and shall not seek or take directions from any government or public or private entity when carrying out its regulatory tasks other than as required under this law. LERC shall be qualified, within the scope of its legal authority and jurisdiction, to make final adjudicatory and administrative decisions. Subject only to the appellate process.”
WE ARE PUZZLED because it behooves us to wonder how the head of one agency can work independently while serving as head of another institution.
MORE IMPORTANTLY, THE LTA (Part 3, Point 3) States: “No Commissioner or member of permanent staff of the LTA may have a direct or indirect financial interest or maintain any investment in any telecommunications company with operations or interests in Liberia during the tenure of his or her office or employment. Commissioners and permanent staff shall also ensure they have no other interests and undertake no other activities that are contrary to the proper exercise of their responsibilities 9 as members of the LTA, and shall not engage in any other employment or receive any other form of compensation or remuneration while they are members of the LTA.”
THE EXECUTIVE MANSION has not stated whether or not Ms. Weeks has been replaced at the LTA or whether a replacement has been named.
PRESIDENT SIRLEAF’S actions demonstrate that she is either out of touch with the realities and concerns many Liberians have regarding the unfair distribution of wealth, resources and revenues in Liberia or she simply has decided to ignore such glaring acts because she has won her two terms and on the way out of the Liberian presidency.
WHATEVER THE PRESIDENT is thinking or was thinking when she made this appointment, we caution that it sets a really bad precedent and goes contrary to everything she penned in internationally-acclaimed best seller, “This Child Will Be Great”.
IN HER MEMOIR, President Sirleaf was highly critical of her predecessors Tubman, Tolbert, Doe and Taylor. She chided Tolbert in particular for inserting his family members in government, a point that some of Sirleaf’s harshest critics including former Auditor General John S. Morlu and fellow Nobel Laureate Leymah Gbowee have repeated held her feet to the fire on.
MORLU, IN OCTOBER 2012 accused Sirleaf of violating the Code of Conduct as well as the Liberian constitution by appointing her children in government. Sirleaf signed Executive Order No. 38, the Code of Conduct which aims to ensure good governance. Morlu said good governance speaks against negative vices such as nepotism and corruption, a point which is also highlighted in Article 5 of the Liberian constitution.
WHAT PAINS US is that Sirleaf, has failed to learn from her mistakes in the past eleven years. She has repeatedly put her faith in people and family that have not only let her down but brought unnecessary embarrassment to her government and to Liberia.
A CASE IN POINT is the recent discovery relating to leaks of an Internal Audit Unit (IAU) of the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning on the operational audit of the Private Sector Development Initiatives(PSDI). The PSDI is a project, that was established in 2014 at the MFDP to provide loans to Liberian-owned small and medium-sized Enterprises (SME’s). The loan was meant to financially-strengthen Liberian businesses. In so doing, the process would create jobs and accelerate the participation of Liberian owned businesses in the economy of Liberia.
A CASE in point, several of those linked to the report, including Mr. Sebastian Muah, the former Managing Director of LIBTELCO, have fled the country and may never show their face in Liberia again.
MUAH WAS subject to a FrontPageAfrica investigation which found that he had purchased shares in a casino in the Central African Republic with a down payment of nearly a quarter million dollars.
A CASE IN POINT, Ellen Corkrum, who like Muah, was accused of embezzlement thousands of dollars when she headed the Liberia Airport Authority(LAA) but is now out of reach.
A CASE IN point, a Global Witness bribery report linking several prominent figures in the government, particularly the national legislature currently on trial for allegedly taking bribes to influence concession laws.
WE OWE IT TO Liberia to speak truth to power on matters of the heart. But more importantly, we owe it to the Liberian presidency to tell them when and where they have missed their steps.
PRESIDENT SIRLEAF, at the end of the day is wrong in giving yet another job to a member of the Weeks family. There are plenty of qualified Liberians residing right on this soil who are more than qualified to occupy these positions.
THESE ARE SOME of the lapses that led us to war, these are some of the lapses that force people to rise up against established rules and these are the very lapses that Liberians should strive to do away with. It is wrong, it is painful and it simply sends a really bad message to the world about who we are as a people and what we are as a country emerging from war.