Monrovia – Montserrado County Representative Dixon Wlawee Seboe is optimistic that the induction of the New Kru Town (NKT) District-16 Development Council (DDC) will greatly help him implement his campaign promises. The DDC, as the name implies, will oversee and encourage the decentralization of developmental programs and provide a responsible administration by involving different kinds of district’s functions.
It is made up of one person from the 25 communities chosen by their respective leadership.
A 12-man advisory board with diverse backgrounds and professional pieces of training will help the DDC.
“When we started our campaign, we were cleared that development, from our perspective, will be a bottom-to-top approach. For us to be able to develop our environment, it must be people driven.
“And one of our campaign promises was that we will organize the district development council that will spearhead all of our development projects. Now, we have a cross-section of the common people.
“Their term of reference will be to spearhead the entire district development agenda. We have problems with flood. We have problems with drainage. We have problems with education. Anything that is developmentally driven is going to be led by this group,” said Seboe on July 8.
Working in consultation with the representative’s office, the DDC will also provide a responsive administration and prepare a budget for developmental programs.
But funding has been a constraint underpinning development, especially in post-conflict countries like Liberia. So where will the DDC get funds to deal with, sanitation, for example?
“There is an expenditure line [in the national budget], year on year, called legislative projects. That is going to be one source of funding for what they are going to be doing. Whatever we decide as Montserrado County will be brought to the DDC and they will decide what will benefit the district.
“Beyond that, we have a lot of institutions that operate here [in the Borough]. They have corporate social responsibilities. So funds that will be coming from there will also be given to the DDC to drive the development agenda,” Seboe explained.
The governor, who is elected by the eight nominating districts and later appointed by the president, is the administrative head of the borough/district.
Will the DDC and its advisory board be working in isolation or in consultation with the governor’s office?
“We need to draw a line between what the representative does and what is being handled by the governor. The governor has key things to do but as a legislator, all of us who campaigned said we were going to change our districts in different ways.
“So this group is going to be charged with doing development as far as the office of the representative is concerned. Of course, they are not going to work outside of the governor’s office. We need to ensure that the governor is in everything we need to do. So they will liaise with the governor where we need her intervention,” Seboe clarified.
The Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) lawmaker already has some short and medium-term projects on his mind.
“We will speak to our partners for funding for scholarship. So the DDC will find students who will get on the scholarship. They will decide whether we will target 10 persons per community. That takes us to 250 persons across elementary, junior and senior high and college.
“We are also faced with the issue of waste. There is a huge stockpile of garbage in Duala and other areas. We need to work with the governor to see how we can collect the waste. They have to be engaged with drainage issues because we are in the rainy season.
“But we need to plan so that when the dry season starts we can fix it once and for all. So those are things that they have to start to work on. They have a good leadership already in place. And I will be depending on them to come up with suggestions and we can start the ball rolling,” added Seboe.
Seboe then called on his colleagues to set-up DDCs in the 73 districts to enable them to concentrate on their cardinal duties of lawmaking, representation and oversight.
“I was thrilled during the induction and I am excited now but our people were excited because it was a campaign promise. And it shows that we are ready for business. And I want to use this opportunity to encourage our colleagues to ensure that each of us has a district development council.
“It will help us a lot more. It will take us from in the forefront of implementation and then we can play a back role of monitoring and oversight.
The Institute for Research and Development (IREDD) launched a book on campaign promises during the 2017 presidential and legislative elections but Seboe said he was in the implementation when the book was launched on May 21.
As a matter of fact, Seboe said, IREDD will grade him in keeping with his plan and its implementation.
“One of the things they put in their report was that we told them we were going to be involved with agriculture. It was a mistake on their part. We called them and made that rectification. I don’t know whether they have done that but we will love to see IREDD engage us time after time.
“When we say to our people we will do X, Y and Z in the campaign, it is just befitting for us to do them. So if you have not done what you said you will do, it is important for IREDD to just call you to book. It is not to push you but to give you a reminder,” added Seboe.
New Kru Town is an ideally located community, which became a safe haven during intermittent civil wars but sanitation remains a major challenge for the over 80,000 inhabitants.