I did a publication work—via my small and struggling media institution Refuge Communitions—for the Independent National Commission for Human Rights (INCHR) on the 21st day of December of 2015. And my service fee has not been released up to the date (July 7, 2016) this article was being written.
Officials of INCHR had told me—more than a dozen times— that it’s the Liberia’s office of the United Nations Development Project (UNDP) that would pay my service fee some day between January and March of the following year (2016). “The UNDP manages the INCHR’s projects fund and is responsible, based on a Contract between the UN and the Government of Liberia, to pay all INCHR’s vendors whose service fee is above three hundred United States Dollars,” an official of the INCHR told me five days after I completed the job.
In February, I contacted an official of the UNDP’s Registry and asked if he had seen “any media company called Refuge Communications with the Independent National Commission for Human Rights’ 2016 Annual Work Plan at the UNDP’s Registry?”
“I didn’t see media institution with the name Refuge Communications,” the official said, after searching INCHR’s files. “Please go back to the person or government agency to send information about your media institution to us.”
The following day, another UNDP official told me the criteria for a media contractor for any government ministry or agency to enter the UNDP’s computer for recognition: First, the contractee (in this case, INCHR) should send a list of three media institutions to the UNDP, as those bidding for the minstry’s or agency’s job; and second, the UNDP would pick the media institution to do the job—not the agency whose work is to be done.
INCHR’s Project Manager Sunny A. George, who gave me the contract, had not explained these bureacracies to me during our discussion on the transaction. He did that one almost one month later.
I explained the matter to another official of the INCHR, who told me Mr. George took a unilateral decision with the contract, adding that such action has placed my service fee into a “bad debt”—meaning the money would never come out. Two other officials said the same things.
Mr. George’s colleagues’ assertions made me feel swindled by him and frustrated.
On these negative feelings, I thought on the fourth day of March (2016) to complain, via the media, against the INCHR to which Mr. Sunny A. George belongs and holds a top position. I believed the ‘widely publicized’ complaint would arouse other people’s interest to investigate the matter from the INCHR’s end and UNDP’s.
But three INCHR top officials prevented me with the allegations below:
“UNDP’s Finance Officers’ demand for bribe to sign our 2016’s Annual Work Plan, or AWP, is responsible for our delay to release your service fee.”
“For each hundred US dollars we put in for, the Finance Office would demand seven cent.”
“The Finance Office charges US$16.00 for each Blue cheque, and takes US$32 from us for each Red chegue.” (The speaker didn’t give meaning of ‘Blue Cheque’ or ‘Red Cheque’)
“We are owing US 25,000 as cut for the Finance Office over our 2015’s projects in the AWP.”
“The UNDP’’s Registry would not forward our AWP to the Finance Office until we’ve released that department’s cut (bribe) for the past year’s AWP. Any AWP whose cut we didn’t pay is declared missing in the office, and we are asked to resubmit the AWP.”
“They (Finance Office) just told us today, March 4, that we have under-valued the consultancy fee for our consultant, Oscar Bloh, by US$5,000, so they are asking us to insert that amount of money in this year’s AWP, which they sent back today.”
“We (INCHR) owe Aminata Gas Station over nine thousand since the fourth quarter of December, 2015, on the UNDP’s Finance Office’s withholding of part of the INCHR’s 2015’s operation budget to pay Aminata.”
“UNDP’s Finance Office is holding on to US$300, being service fee, for Professor Sayndee since 2013, for serving as Moderator at one of INCHR’s workshops.” (His full name is Debey T. Sayndee, Director of the Kofi Anan Institute of Conflict Transformation, at the University of Liberia)
The Work I Did For the INCHR
I published the INCHR’s Ethnographic Report’s Validation (under its Palava Hut Project) events in the December 21st (2015) edition of my newly established education newspaper (Edu-Diary), a flagship publication of Refuge Communications.
The Validation program was held on December 14 at the Bong County Security Hub. I was at the program, officially representing the President of the Press Union of Liberia, Mr. Kamara Abdullai Kamara.
At the end of the program, INCHR’s Project Manager, Mr. Sunny A. George, asked me at the program venue to do a promotional story about the events in my paper. (Prior to commencement of the program, I had distributed free copies of the second edition among participants including all INCHR’s officials)
In Monrovia, Mr. George and I agreed on One-Thousand-Five-Hundred and Twenty-five United States Dollars (US$ 1, 525.00) to cover five full pages of colour (pictorial) with the text (promotional story). At his office, he supplied photos for the pictorial. I delivered 230 copies of the paper at the INCHR’s headquarters in Oldest Congo Town on December 21, the day the papers were produced.
On December 22, I sent an SMS to Mr. George asking for my service fee before the INCHR closed for the Christmas break (December 25); Mr. George replied, via SMS, that it won’t be possible “before the break…It’s the UNDP that pays vendors who rendered services to the Palava Hut Program n unfortunately their financial institution is closed until January 28. Moreover, I placed in your payment request yesterday. Please be patient.”
On Mr. Sunny A. George’s advice, I waited for the first half of February for the payment matter, but Mr. George told me it was the UNDP—not the INCHR—that would call me for my payment cheque.
The “few weeks” of waiting extended beyond six months and I could see no sign of my reward of my academic and intellectual services for Media Company named Refuge Communications coming out to me in another month.
I saw ‘news’ in the three INCHR officials’ allegations against UNDP—perceived as an organization of morally upright persons—and thought of writing a news story of them. But I had to get the “UNDP’s side of the allegation” (as we say in Journalism) to balance my ‘news story on the allegations.
“I think those INCHR officials who told you about corruption at the UNDP, here, have mistaken the GMS’s fee the UNDP subtracts from each government ministry’s or agency’s fund it manages, for bribe,” replied the UNDP official, who didn’t want to be revealed in this article. “As a policy, the UNDP’s Country Office in Liberia takes off a small amount from each AWP to service the computers, printers, the power generator, and other things we used on the government’s ministry or agency whose fund we keep.”
I had also complained to UNDP’s Project Analyst Willie Davies—responsible to add INCHR’s vendor’s information into the UNDP’s data—who showed me in his office my contribution to the delay in processing my company’s cheque.
“I can’t put your food in a dirty bowl presented to me,” he said to me in parable at his office about wrong figures on my company’s Proforma Invoice which INCHR had forwarded to his office in February. “I can’t issue cheque for your company on the wrong information in your calculations and the unsupported documents from your client.” He added: “The auditors to come would thoroughly check your information against the amount on the check I released.”
He asked me to go back to make corrections, which I completed (with new Proforma and Credit Invoices) I did one week later, with coaching from Hamid and Loboe—to INCHR officials assigned to me—to resubmit the corrected document to UNDP.
But, about two months later, call for cheque collection came from neither INCHR nor UNDP as Mr. Sunny A. George had assured me—the third or fourth time.
On my outcry about economic pangs from the ‘withheld service fee’, INCHR Chairperson Justice Gladys Johnson spearheaded release of US$350 to me on March 3 as part of my total service fee.
We agreed on reimbursement of the borrowed amount when the UNDP released the total service fee.
Later, when all diplomatic means I explored to get my service fee had been ignored by INCHR or UNDP’s Finance Office, I thought of taking the matter to court. But some prominent national figures warned me against legal action, saying it would cause my money to be trapped forever. “You won’t win the case against the government, represented by INCHR, and they would nudge the UNDP to delay paying the money in a time longer than you have waited,” one imagined.
On these warnings, I’ve resigned to continuing in the ‘diplomatic’ route, only praying to the Almighty above to prick the conscience of the person blocking the processing or release of my service fee to feel the need of me to survive like he/she is surviving on fat salary and bonuses from the UNDP. Mm jest h
In the INCHR’s Procurement and Monitoring Unit (Office) on Friday, June 24, Mr. Sunny George showed me on his Laptop a communication he said was a CC copy (to INCHR) of a “hand over note from Mr. Willie Davies on May 16 to the UNDP’s Finance Office (of UNDP), clearing Refuge Communications and other people who worked for us for payment,” Mr. George announced and pointed to my media company[s name on the list. Then he assured me: “Expect call from us or UNDP latest Wednesday” (July 29)
The call never came, and Mr, George blamed the UNDP’s Finance Office for the futility of his assurance.
“Those guys in the UNDP’s Finance Office are always hot to process or release payment cheques for companies whose procurement departments would give them big cuts (bribes) in thousands of US Dollars, not a small and struggling entity like yours on a service fee below two thousand Dollars,” another INCHR official replied told me, on confidentiality, after I complained about UNDP’s Finance Office’s delay to release my company’s cheque quoting Project Manager Sunny A. George.
What baffles—and sometime irritates—me is the INCHR’s works not being affected by the UNDP’s payment policy that has kept me out of my only business (newspaper production) for almost eight months. The UNDP’s Finance Office is still releasing money (from the INCHR’s annual budget) for the Commission’s nationwide field trips, for office maintenance, and for staff salaries. For example, on April 6, the INCHR embarked on an 18-day peace tours in three counties—Bong, Nimba and Grand Gedeh. This was the fourth month of the Commission’s indebtedness to me.
The delay to release my service fee is causing a lot of economic, human and constitutional right problems for me and my five-member family. The most stinging ones are the pause of my publication business—my family only source of livelihoods, my children being out of school—due to no school fees, my landlady’s constant pester for my rent for 2016 (my family is to be evicted from the house on August 1 if we failed—the third time—to pay the rent before the 31st of July), and my inability to pay tax to the government for my newspaper business. (The work I did for INCHR was the first one that fetched money the paper)
Like me, you always perceive leaders at the INCHR—now doing the job of the disbanded Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC)—promoters of “national peace” with the way they treat not-too-powerful outsiders (vendors) on payment of fee for service rendered And, like me, you often feel those Liberians in the Registry/Finance Office of UNDP (Liberia) are upholding the “morally stainless” stature of this global development institution (UNDP) with a payment methodology that is not hurting.
Should I complain to the Court before my service fee comes out?
Samuel G. Dweh- [email protected]