
CAPE MOUNT – Travelers are stranded, vehicles traveling on the highway to and from Grand Cape Mount, Sierra Leone and Montserrado County are halted in long queues as sticks, pieces of iron and old gallons are crossed from one end of the road to the other.
Report by Evelyn Kpadeh Seagbeh, Contributing Writer
The roadblock is a protest by recruited enumerators for the Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geo-Information Services (LISGIS) in demand of their stipend (transportation & feeding) promised to them by LISGIS prior to the start of the training.
The aggrieved enumerators lamented that for the ten days of the training, LISGIS made them to transport and feed themselves contrary they were told by to the local county structure in Grand Cape Mounty County through the county’s director Mr. Usuma B. Kanneh.
“Our disenchantment is with the director of LISGIS, Hon. Wilmot Smith. He told the House of Representatives yesterday, October 20, 2022 that they (LISGIS) gave us money for lodging and feeding which are all lies. All the little money we had on us during the training, has all finished. We had to beg our friends before we could eat.
“We were in the training for 10 days and not a bottle of water or a cent was provided to us. Last night at midnight, all the materials that were being used for the training were packed and driven to Monrovia leaving us here undone. Matthew J. Johns, one of the enumerators angrily told FrontPagePage.
A total of 532 participants from the four LISGIS training centers which include – the Multi-Purpose Building, Sinje Youth Center, Robert Sports, and Golakonneh Center Hall say they are dissatisfied with the manner in which were treated by LISGIS. The aggrieved enumerators have threatened to state another action in the county if LISGIS failed to provide them a stipend.
Mediation by the officers of the Liberia National Police, the LISGIS Grand Cape Mount County Director, Mr. Usuma Kanneh, and the Liberia Immigration Services to convince the aggrieved LISGIS trainees to remove the roadblock lasted several hours.
“I know this is a problem that you people are hurt about but I am appealing to you to kindly remove the things from the road as we continue to talk to the authorities to see reason to understand that what they did to you people is not good at all. I am not supporting my institution (LISGIS) to say what they did to you people is good, so I am trying in my weak way too for them to give you what is due you,” Usuma Kanneh told the aggrieved protesters.

FrontPageAfrica has learned that the disenchantment among trainees of LISGIS ongoing training for the upcoming national census is not just unique to Grand Cape Mounty County alone. The challenges associated with the recruitment and training of enumerators for the 2022 National Population Census from across the country have been chaotic.
The process leading to the actual holding of the census many of those interviewed by this paper says has been characterized by lots of chaos.
In some places, training that was meant to last for ten days is being cut down to 5 days; while in Lofa County, local caterer providers who were contacted by LISGIS to pre-finance a catering service for the training in the county in Zorzor, Foya, Kolahum and Voinjama cannot get back their expenses after purchasing food items worth thousands of Liberian and United states dollars for the Lofa County phase of the training. FrontPage Africa will publish a full article on the Lofa County LISGIS Chaos in the coming days.