MOLAJ donates to 6 counties

As the Ebola death toll continues to increase across Liberia despite interventions by international partners, the Movement for Labour Rights and Justice (MOLAJ) has provided hands washing buckets with detergents to 32 communities in six counties outside Monrovia.

MOLAJ is working on a campaign project to combat Ebola in workplaces and communities in collaboration with the Ministry of Health & Social Welfare and the Liberia Labour Movement with an initial support from the United Steel Workers’ Humanity Fund.

According to press statement issued in Monrovia, the intent is to ensure workers and their families are saved from the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) by providing them with awareness education and preventive measures at the workplace and the community, including distribution of buckets and chlorine, among others.

The release said the effort is an attempt to break the spread of the virus and eventually get rid of the EVD out of Liberia. The donation, which is put at a little over US$12,275.00  was carried out Margibi, Bong, Grand Bassa, Nimba, Grand Cape Mount and Bomi counties, respectively. Project Advisor David D. Sackoh, told this paper that three thousand, nine hundred seventy-three persons, amounting to five hundred fifty-five family heads, including one hundred eighty-one public places benefited from the gesture.

Mr. Sackoh said his entity also mapped targeted workplaces and communities where Ebola cases have been registered by the government and other international organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) and together with the respective trade unions, selected volunteers from local union leadership, shop-stewards shop-floor members and Community Based Youth Organizations in those areas to carry out the project.

According to him, the national labour center underscored that the fight against Ebola goes beyond the normal and traditional trade union services to union members but engaging in vigorous Ebola awareness education and preventive campaign, and making people to accept the facts, with supply sanitizers is inevitable in the fight as the best way to break the virus transmission thereby getting rid of Ebola in Liberia.

The Liberia Labour Congress expressed condolence to doctors and nurses who have died from Ebola and other fallen workers and called for support to the awareness and preventive measures campaign because without such action to break the virus connection chain, “the world’s best doctors will come to Liberia yet more people will be infected and more people will die.

Mr. Sackoh also commended Firestone Natural Rubber Plantation in Margibi County, Sim Darby Rubber and Oil Palm Plantations in Bomi & Grand Cape Mount Counties, and Arcelor Mittal Iron Ore Mining Operations in Nimba, Grand Bassa and Bong Counties, China Union Iron Ore Mining in Bong Mines, Bong County, Putu Iron Ore Mining (PIOM) – Silvertal International in Grand Gedeh County for continuously educating their employees and community dwellers around their operation sites about the danger of the deadly Ebola Virus.