Nimba County Senator Prince Yormie Johnson is recommending that President George Manneh Weahpay Civil Servants three months’ salaries advance, as they observe 14 days “Stay At Home” and 21-day nationwide State of Emergency declared by the President, as part of measures to fight the coronavirus.He warns that failure of government to heed his advice, Liberians would roam the streets to seek daily meals for survival.
Senator Johnson also calls on the government to pay serious and keen attention to health workers throughout the country, noting that they are frontline generals that need special attention from government.
Speaking Wednesday, April 15, during a special session of the Liberian Senate held in the rotunda of the Capitol on President Weah’s stimulus package for the pandemic submitted to the Liberian Legislature for a possible endorsement, Sen. PYJ notes that if government is serious in the combat against the deadly Corona virus, it should train contact tracers, and not pick people from anywhere to carry out such dedicated task.
On Monday of this week, President Weah had written both the House of Representatives and the Liberian Senate, seeking their approval of a stimulus package for all Liberians, including food distribution, electricity and water supply as well as settlement of small informal petty traders’ loans and government domestic debts owed local vendors.
In a communication dated April 13, read in plenary of the senate during its first special sitting for the hearing of the State of Emergency declared last week, the President writes, “I propose that for the remainder of fiscal year 2019/20 of the Liberian Legislature re-appropriate the amount of US$25 million to support food distribution to household in designated affected counties for the period of 60 days.”
At the same time, Senator Johnson calls on Vice President Jewel Howard Taylor and other officials of government that are using the COVI-19 pandemic as a personal project to stop.
He explains that Madam Taylor and others place their photos on hands washing buckets and erecting bill boards with their pictures in every corner of the city, criticizing that such practice is unacceptable, as it portrays the collective fight against the virus was being reduced to personal projects for self-glorification.
By E. J. Nathaniel Daygbor-Editing by Jonathan Browne
