On the 21st day of December of 2015, I published in my young and struggling education journal (Edu-Diary) the texts (stories) and pictures from INCHR Workshop held at the Bong County Security Hub on December 14 of the same year…..
Her Excellency Madam Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
President of the Republic of Liberia
Executive Mansion
Monrovia, Liberia
October 19, 2016
Your Excellency:
I am a Liberian writer, educator, Author, a member of each of Liberia’s national writers’ bodies: Press Union of Liberia (PUL) and Liberia Association of Writers (LAW).
I extend my compliments and best wishes and feel obligated to thank you, with sincerity, for keeping our Country, Liberia, on the road of peace and development after fourteen years of civil war that destroyed most of the Country’s infrastructure and engender extreme fear, suspicion and hatred in many Liberians against their compatriots.
My Nation’s Leader, I was emotionally pressed to bring to your attention, through this public medium, human rights violation by the Independent National Commission for Human Rights (INCHR), a government entity tasked to heal emotional wounds caused by actions of persons during our nation’s civil war and by some persons in this time of calm.
My resort to complain to you is due to failure of the Commission’s leadership to resolve the issue, and based on my strong conviction that your intervention will prick the conscience of the person blocking my entitlement to show empathy.
The Issue
On the 21st day of December of 2015, I published in my young and struggling education journal (Edu-Diary) the texts (stories) and pictures from INCHR Workshop held at the Bong County Security Hub on December 14 of the same year.
INCHR’s Project Manager Mr. Sunny A. George authorized me at the Workshop to publish and assured me INCHR would pay settle the cost. (I was representing Press Union of Liberia’s President Kamara Abdullai Kamara at the Workshop)
The education newspaper is for young and struggling media entity named Refuge Communications.
Before publication, Mr. Sunny A. George and I agreed on US$1,525.00 for the work which include five (5) pages of color pictures (pictorial) and supporting texts (stories).
He supplied the photos at the INCHR Office in Congo Town, Monrovia.
However, the INCHR, during the leadership of Justice Gladys Johnson, has paid only Three Hundred and Fifty United States Dollars (US$350.00) in April, 2015.
All my pleadings to Mr. Sunny A. George and INCHR Chairperson (before she retired from the Commission) for the balance of my service have been ignored.
Some officials of the Commission had told me in July that it is the Finance Office of UNDP (that manages INCHR’s Fund) that’s causing the delay in release of my service fee on demand of bribe to sign the INCHR’s 2016’s Operation budget from which my service fee would come.
(On December 22 INCHR Project Manager Mr. Sunny A. George sent me a text message saying it the UNDP that pays for services by INCHR’s vendors). I reported this allegation to the media in July with the heading: Media Strangulation: Is UNDP (Liberia) this Corrupt?
(Some papers published the allegation one or two days later) My aim of relaying the allegation was to have journalists investigate the matter against the Liberia Office of the UNDP we hold in high esteem on integrity in its transaction.
I spoke with officials of UNDP Finance Office, between March and July of 2016, who told me my media company’s name was not in the UNDP file on INCHR (contrary to INCHR Sunny A. George’s information to me) and that my client (INCHR) had not given me the right information about how the name of a media institution can enter into the UNDP’s database for government Ministries or Agency whose fund it manages.
The INCHR should have first forwarded my media company’s name with two others on a list for UNDP to pick the “best media entity for the work,” an official of the UNDP had told me in April.
INCHR Project Manager Mr. Sunny George didn’t tell me this criterion of vendor selection by the UNDP when he and I were discussing the INCHR’s job in Bong County on December 14, 2015.
Few days later, I relayed the UNDP officials’ revelation to the then INCHR Chairperson Justice Gladys Johnson who convened a meeting (witnessed by Commissioner Tonieh Wiles) between me and Mr. Sunny A. George I her office. It was at this meeting she promised to raise the part-payment (US$350.00) stated above. She never pressed with getting the balance before she left INCHR. (I read about retirement at INCHR in a local newspaper in October, 2016)
On September 12, I officially informed (through a letter) INCHR’s Acting Chairperson, Mr. Bartholomeo Colley, about the Commission’s debt to my media company. He told me, through his deputy, Mr. L. Welleh Valintine, he was travelling outside of Liberia, to be back between 29-30 of September, for us to discuss finally resolve the matter. But my service fee is still trapped.
Your Excellency, Madam President, during your inaugural address in 2006 (after you were sworn in as Liberia’s 22nd President), you appealed to Liberians to help in the economic development of our Country using their academic knowledge or talents. You have been making this clarion call since that time.
Responding to your patriotic appeal, I established Refuge Communications (publishers of Edu-Diary Newspaper) to not only feed my five-member family, but to also help other Liberians to participate in the national reconstruction.
Edu-Diary focuses exclusively on strengths and challenges of our nation’s education sector and celebrates academic achievements of Liberians and foreigners contributing immensely to Liberia’s education sector.
(You are featured on the back page of the first edition published on December 7, 2015. The story about you was about your education achievements. I sent your free copy, delivered by me through the Reception Desk at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. However, you have notified me on your receipt of the copy)
The paper also promotes academic achievements of students at the grade school level, especially their problem-solution articles about any subjects they sent for publication.
However, Edu-Diary has been off the Newsstand for ten (10) months (beginning from December 21, 2015—the date the third edition (with INCHR’s promotional information came out).
INCHR’s refusal to pay my service fee is keeping me in US$500.00 as production debt. US$150.00 of this amount is for Mr. Othello Garba, Editor at the New Dawn Newspaper, who credited me the printing cost.
On December 20 on my assurance to pay back if INCHR paid me before they closed for Christmas break. The other part of the US$500.00 is for printing papers and technical service fees.
INCHR’s refusal to release my service fee is causing a lot of human rights problems for me and my family: I am out of job (newspaper production), my children are out of school (no school fees), my family is being ejected from our home (we can’t pay rent), and I can’t settle my debt for production of my paper.
Your Excellency, Madam President, please intervene fast in this situation, so that my service fee will be released to me, and the emotional torture my family is experiencing at the moment will end.
If this money entered the tenth day of December of this year (2016), my getting it in this year will be impossible. This is because the UNDP closes its budget year for the INCHR from the tenth of the year.
Thank you.
Samuel G. Dweh, Lakpazee Community,
0886-618-906 | [email protected]