Liberia News- ‘WE ARE WILLING TO DIE FOR OUR MONEY’

Monrovia-Dismissed employees of the Ministry of State for Presidential Affairs are digging in their heels for what they are referring to as ‘legitimate arrears’ owed them by the Government of President Joseph Nyu                           ma Boakai.

About two months since their employments were terminated by the government and subsequently paid for the three months worked for under the new administration, the angry dismissed MOS workers are mounting persistent pressure on the government through the Ministry State to ensure that justice is perfectly served in their situation.

Two of the former MOS employees, appearing on Voice of Liberia’s morning talk show Thursday, did not conceal their intention to use every available means, including street protest at the Executive Mansion, to draw the government’s attention to their plight and to pay them for six years of service provided as employees of the Ministry of State.

The ladies who did not call their names for apparent fear of reprisal disclosed that the Ministry only paid them the three months they worked for prior to the termination of their services, under the guise that the government was impecunious to retain their services.

According to them, the Ministry of State through Deputy Minister for Administration, Atty. Cornelia Krauh Togba cited them to a meeting on March 29, 2024 (Good Friday) and informed them of the decision to dismiss them.

“I went off upon hearing such terrible news of losing my job. I have children, other people children I am taking care of. I was concerned about how will I take care of them, sending them to school,” remarked one of them.

“For me, I was making $160 USD and $7,000LD, some people were making $300, $200. For us, we are cleaners, we don’t know book,” she said. “They gave me a check containing the sum of $500USD and over $20,000LD representing the three months we worked for,” she further narrated.

During  the exercise which took place at the Samuel Kanyon Doe Sports Complex, the ladies also divulged that they were made to sign a statement which they supposed was a waiver before being handled their check, insisting that there was no way they could refuse attesting their signatures to the document in the face of ‘not having money.’

Those who familiar with the particular situation buttressed the ladies’ claims, stating that the document in question was a wavier which in part committed the dismissed employees to agreeing that “their employment did not meet set requirements, and that as per the payment of the three months, the government was not indebted to them any longer.”

“We had to sign the document as the only way one could get their money. It was done under duress,” one of the alleged, an inference of the harsh conditions they endured to get the three months’ salary they legitimately worked for.

They accused the government of political witch-hunt because the decision to terminate their services had a shroud of politics, considering the fact that most of them were partisans and fanatics of the former ruling Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC).

They ladies also asserted that once one did not carry the Identification card of the Unity Party prior to the ascendancy of the government, he or she was considered an opposition and did not deserve employment status in the Boakai administration.