A nation which prides itself as God-fearing and claims she was founded on Christian principles in the 1800s has reduced herself to the dungeons of crooks, reducing the nation’s integrity to the lowest ebb amongst the comity of nations!
By: Joe Noutoua Wandah
Media Advocate and Contributing Writer
According to information circulating within homes and workplaces in Liberia from the United States, it described Liberia’s democratic consolidation and its economic growth as raising costs, causing delays, and exposing investors to legal and reputational risks!
Accordingly, the report adds, multinationals frequently say they are charged fees that appear nowhere in their investment agreements, and accounts of extortion at multiple levels of government are common. The worst areas, it says, are procurement, contract and concession awards, customs and tax administration, regulatory approvals, and government payment systems.
Liberia has signed the relevant regional, continental and United Nations anti-corruption conventions. The State Department’s assessment is that membership has not produced measurable reductions in corruption. Enforcement of domestic anti-graft laws, it says, is inconsistent, with even-handed application being the exception rather than the rule.
What is more shocking is that investment on paper sounds very great, but those at the helm of affairs are entrenched in massive corruption, which serves as an impediment for investors coming to Liberia despite her natural resources which attract any multinational corporation upon reading about Liberia!
Why should an astronomical amount often be requested by officials of government when it has no bearing whatsoever on the investment agreements?
Unfortunately for the nation (Liberia), under her governance system within the civil service scheme, no regime taking office sacks a group of employees because officials of government (civil servants) serving there were allegedly corrupt!
Government inherits these same people who were engaged in these malfeasances, and some are transferred to other offices within the same agencies or ministries of government with their corrupt practices!
Moreover, alleged corruption cases are often prosecuted in the courts of law, but government is always on the losing end with no convictions which should have served as a deterrent to would-be corrupt people!
Where are those value systems put in place by those frontrunners within the democratization process, those founding fathers of the nation, which kept her as a shining example in the fight for freedom for most of independent Africa?
With this kind of blunt verdict from the world’s most powerful capital city (Washington) on Liberia’s investment climate, hopes are now dashed for the prospects of more job creation which is the engine of job availability!
Ironically, Liberia is one of the nations in which the government is the highest employer of its citizenry, rather than the private sector which is the engine of growth!
Which administration will ever prosecute alleged corruption cases with convictions, in serving as a deterrent to would-be incoming corrupt officials within her governance sectors?
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