Ellen warns of more difficult times

President Ellen Johnson – Sirleaf has cautioned Liberians that the country is in more difficult times than people know, but she remains confident in her citizen’s resilience to rise above difficult times.

“These are difficult times; more difficult than you know. But once again Liberians have been able to meet difficult times and to rise above it. And I know that this time together, we will do the same,” she said on Friday, 28 October at the First United Methodist Church on Ashmum Street in Monrovia during intercessory service for her 78th birthday.

Upon her return from Durban, South Africa, she appealed that Liberians everywhere “look at your city and be so ashamed of it that you will join the government” to [do] a cleanup. The President says as the rainy season comes to an end and “we” move into the dry season in which construction works and physical things which bad weather had limited can now be done, everyone should join government and begin to clean their homes and work places to be proud of their places.

“It’s time for us to individually and collectively make our city what it is. And many of you travel abroad all the times you see cities, you see how it looks, you see how it’s cleaned,” she said.
Having acknowledged the difficult times here, President Sirleaf said people need to try to take care of the places they live and work, vowing that government will be reaching out to the people to talk about how the partnership can go in the next two to three months as “we” try to achieve an agenda that has been formulated.

She urged every Liberian to reach out to each other and those who are disadvantaged to offer kind word to make the kind of friendship that will be able to achieve the collaboration that “we all want to see.”

President Sirleaf said government cannot do everything like cleaning people’s yard, paint their houses or cut down trees that are growing on people’s buildings working place, but noted that the government can be a partner to every citizen and do its part in terms of limited resources. She said the government can give incentives in the form of jobs; while also warning that the government can impose penalties.

By Winston W. Parley