Dear Minister Kamara,
It is with many frustrations I write this open letter to you calling your attention on budgetary allocations made for government ministries and agencies service delivery.
Minister Kamara, you and I are aware that the draft budget for 2016/17 recurrent expenditure is US$ 459.44 million and goods and services are US$105.5 million.
Sir, as you already know, for Fiscal Year 2014/15, the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning disbursed US $526 Million as recurrent expenditures for the running of government ministries and agencies.
Within this spending, a disbursement of US$183.1 million which constituted 34.8% of the recurrent expenditure envelope was made available to state institutions for delivery of goods and services.
To be specific, the government of Liberia through your office released taxpayers, donor monies, and paid (still paying) staff to write and publish reports.
Sir, it is frustrating to bring to your attention that information is rarely available on most government ministries websites although they are pay by taxpayers and donors monies for the service.
Since you are my former lecturer and now our country’s Finance Minister, I am personally appealing to your office to please review appropriations for IT departments in some government ministries. It is entirely a challenging task to find information from government ministries websites when writing a paper about Liberia.
I am not the first to study out of Liberia and face such challenges, but I too refuse to succumb to these unnecessary constraints from an irresponsible behavior of someone who willingly refuses to do their job or pocket the country’s money!
I do not find pleasure writing negative papers about Liberia, so I cannot remain mute calling out such wicked, selfish and devilish behaviors of people who find pleasure in siphoning our resources to keep us struggling.
The use of information technology is cardinal in present day development agendas, especially for developing countries. Liberia cannot be an exception to the internet of things!
Please do something, Pastor, and Minister Boimah Kamara! If it means calling the GAC to conduct IT Departments Audits in various ministries and government agencies, this will help us to collect information and enhance other researchers to write balanced papers!
I appreciate some of my friends in individual departments and institutions that have already acknowledged this challenge and making some efforts, but that is a micro level!
Joe Wilson,
Sustainable International Development (Candidate)
Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University
Waltham, Massachusetts, USA
[email protected]