By Mark N. Mengonfia
Liberia-Workers of the Reclaiming Liberia Beaches and Water Ways Project have petitioned members of 55th legislature over the reported cancelation of some $2million allocation in the 2024 budget for them.
Early Thursday morning, group of citizens from their various points of work gathered in front of the gate of the Capitol Building, waving placards with different inscriptions, but making specific references to their pay.
The groups included elderly men and women, babies’ mothers and young people carrying placards.
“We have come for our pay,” Old maj. Alfred Z. Gboa, a retired member of the Armed forces of Liberia said.
Old man Gboa who said she spent 53 years in the AFL claimed that since his retirement, he has been working on the beach to make ends meet.
“We are only pleading with them to give our money because that is what we are depending on to make life now,” he pleaded.
Old lady Munah Gibson said, “I come for my money because my children are not in school.”
She said, currently they are yet to get their money, stating, “I who here, my husband is dead and I have eight children who are school-going kids.”
She stressed that they are on the beaches clearing every day and playing with mess, adding: “somebody pupu is what we are playing with it.”
Also, Saywalla Kollie, one of the head monitors of the project said they were at the Capitol Building to claim their lawmakers’ attention to the issue affecting them.
According to him, they met with House’s Chairperson on Ways, Means and Finance, Dixon Seboe and told them that due to the delay, it is only three hundred thousand in the budget, instead of the $2million that was earlier placed in the budget for them.
He quoted Seboe as sayin that when the 2million budget was passed, they made efforts by writing both leadership of the legislature, the ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Youth and Sports but all efforts did not materialize.
“We thought it wise to come to our lawmakers because schools have opened and our kids are not in school, rental fees are on some of us,” Kollie said.
He indicated that if their efforts do not get the anticipated results, they will be left with no option but to put the over 10, 000 Liberians in the streets to speak out loud
The Beach and Weah Way Project was introduced by the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Government, after which the Weah government came in 2011, and then it is the Joseph Boakai government in charge.
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