Announcing an additional $1million here for Liberia’s COVID-19 fight, the Chargé d’Affaires at the United States Embassy in Monrovia, Alyson Grunder, warns both the Government of Liberia and civil society organizations the U.S. is partnering with to maintain the highest standards of accountability and transparency in this ongoing fight.
“We want our resources to have maximum impact and to complement the efforts and initiatives of the government and of other donor partners and organizations”, the U.S. Envoy underscores.
This is important because when countries that are already devastated by the global pandemic are bending over to send their taxpayers’ money here to help Liberians survive the pandemic, unscrupulous individuals both in government and civil society should not see this as an opportunity to siphon donors’ funds, and therefore, deny those directly affected from benefiting.
The call coming from the United States should claim immediate attention of the government and people running civil society organizations in the country to be very careful in handling funds coming from foreign partners.
It would send a very bad image for us as a country when we cry out to friendly nations and humanitarian organizations for support, but when these assistance come, they are misused, wasted and deliberately pocketed.
The coronavirus is rapidly taking away lives in Liberia with just 99 confirmed cases. With the current death rate at 8.8 or 9 percent, more Liberians risk dying by the time our confirmed cases hit about 500 or more.
We need to equip our health workers and hospitals across the country to be able to withstand what probably lies ahead of us as a people. And we will heavily rely on our foreign friends and donor organizations to achieving this.
However, when we begin to mismanage or pocket donors’ money and ignore our people’s plight, we are shooting ourselves in the leg.
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We call on the Weah administration to take heed of the call from the U.S. Embassy and put its feet down firmly on funds coming to the country to help in fighting the COVID-19.
Friendly governments and partners would be glad in seeing impacts of funds coming to the country to help us, which could serve as motivation for increase funding and future support. A hint to the wise…
