Declare financial aid

-NPP urges Govt
The former ruling National Patriotic Party of former President Charles Taylor has urged the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf administration to make full disclosure to the Liberian people of the total financial aid it received sincere 2006, as well as Liberia´s current external and domestic debts.

Speaking at a news conference at its national headquarters in Monrovia yesterday, the National Chairman of the NPP, Mr. James Biney, said despite the tremendous strides by foreign partners in the form of aid to the various sectors of the Sirleaf government, there were still public schools around the country without seats for students. “After ten years of presiding over the education system of Liberia, President Sirleaf and her

Ministry of Education referred to her government´s education system as a ‘mess’.

There are still major high ways (laterite roads) that are cut off during the rainy season,” chairman Biney said. The NPP Chairman – also a representative of Maryland County, intimated that there were secondary laterite roads in the country that have not been rehabilitated for the last 11 years, adding that there were fewer good farms-to-market roads now than existed in the 70s and 80s.

Chairman Biney noted that there exists massive unemployment and unemployment in the face of the enormity of opportunities available. According to him, less than 30 percent have access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene. A recent survey by the World Health organization and UNICEF Joint Monitoring program for water, sanitation and hygiene estimated that over 77 percent of Liberians lack safe drinking water, adequate toilet and proper hygiene.

Biney also claimed that parents´ ability to provide support and care for their children has drastically diminished, resulting in increased teen-age pregnancy and collapse of societal values. “We encourage the Sirleaf- Boakai´s leadership to keep within focus its response to the issues raised herein and provide the Liberian people with adequate information of the utilization of the billions of United States Dollars received in aid, taxes, and loans and make full disclosure of Liberia´s current debt status. Until the government provides such information to enable Liberians make an informed and fair assessment of the government´s performance, we believe the government´s boast of achievements lacks foundation, the NPP Chairman indicated, noting: “basically, to whom much is given, much is expected in return.”

The NPP said by next – 2017, President Sirleaf and Vice President Boakai would have governed Liberia for 12 years, approximately half the time President William Tubman governed Liberian. Biney noted that President Tubman governed Liberia for approximately 27 years. Within a 15 year-period of governance following the end of World War II when the world economy was devastated by the war and technology was not as advanced as it is today while the entire country was inaccessible, the Maryland County Representative pointed out that Tubman built the seaports, Executive Mansion, Capitol Building, Temple of Justice, University, the John Kennedy Medical Center and most state-owned health facilities in the country, the hydro, the White Plains Water Plant, as well as major high schools around the country, the road from Monrovia to every providence in Liberia and most of the local administration buildings in the country. He noted that all these were achieved within a 15-year period, but observed that since the inception of this current administration, multilateral financial institutions, friendly governments and donors provided more than five billion United States dollars to Liberia for reconstruction, maintenance of security and capacity-building for the government. “This represents the largest foreign assistance any regime had received in history,” he said.

By E. J. Nathaniel Daygbor -Edited George Barpeen