By George K. Werner (former education)
The woman at the Civil Service Agency office on Carey Street had walked, she said, all the way from Grand Bassa.
She carried papers tied together with string — letters and signatures from supervisors who themselves no longer worked in government. She had served quietly for years in a county school office. She had not seen a full month’s salary in so long that her youngest children no longer believed she had a real job.
“My children think I am lying,” she sobbed.
I have never forgotten that line. It captured something deeper than any table, spreadsheet, or IMF analysis ever could. It revealed what the Liberian payroll truly meant after the war: not simply compensation, but recognition. Not simply money, but dignity.
The civil service payroll in post-war Liberia was a fragile structure, shaped not by careful design but by survival. It evolved through war, improvisation, donor intervention, politics, and endurance. And like most improvised systems, it carried distortions that later proved difficult to unwind. This chapter tells the story of how we tried — sometimes successfully, sometimes painfully — to rebuild it.
Liberia emerged from the 2003 Accra Peace Accords with institutions that existed more in theory than in practice. Ministries were understaffed and poorly equipped. Record‑keeping systems had collapsed. Many payrolls were handwritten. Personnel files had burned, been altered, or disappeared completely. Salaries were unpredictable. Some workers were paid late, others partially, and some not at all. Teachers in certain places earned as little as fifteen U.S. dollars per month — barely enough for transportation to school. What existed was not a functioning pay system. It was a coping mechanism (Civil Service Agency, 2008).
Electricity was scarce. Ministries depended on fuel slips because generators were the only way to keep offices running. Communication allowances emerged not because government was generous, but because landlines had failed and mobile phones required scratch cards. Over time, these emergency responses became normalized. Benefits that had begun as survival measures hardened into expectations — and expectations became political territory. Who received fuel, who received dollars instead of Liberian currency, and who accessed certain allowances quietly reflected hierarchy and influence.
At the same time, Liberia’s post‑war leaders faced a moral imperative. Schools had to be staffed. Police needed to be recruited. Clinics required nurses and assistants. Between 2005 and 2013, regularizing workers and expanding public employment became essential for stabilizing the country. But every expansion of payroll also expanded fiscal pressure. Salaries grew into one of the government’s largest expenditures. Month after month, payroll became a silent peace settlement reproduced in salary vouchers — an ongoing guarantee that the state would not abandon its workers again (IMF, 2019).
Recognizing the danger of continuing without reform, Liberia adopted the Civil Service Reform Strategy in 2008. It represented the first coherent attempt to rationalize the public service. The strategy sought to right‑size ministries, modernize management systems, reform pay structures, and strengthen accountability. One outcome was the Public Sector Modernization Project, which began the long process of verifying employees, linking positions to real institutional functions, and reducing payroll duplication (Government of Liberia & World Bank, 2014).
A particularly important breakthrough occurred in education. Teacher salaries were finally aligned with qualifications — meaning that a trained teacher or a degree holder was recognized and compensated accordingly. This marked a return to professional standards and reaffirmed the idea that teaching was a skilled occupation deserving respect.
I entered this process personally in 2011 through the UNDP Transfer of Knowledge Through Expatriate Nationals programme. My earliest days at the Civil Service Agency were not spent in polished offices but in spaces powered by aging generators, surrounded by piles of fragile documents. Much of the work involved reconstructing history — matching names to positions, dates, and responsibilities in the absence of reliable files. In those modest offices, however, I encountered some of the most committed public servants I have ever known. With limited resources and uncertain pay, they believed reform was necessary and possible. It was there that I came to understand that payroll reform is as much about dignity and trust as it is about accounting.
Because Liberia lacked many critical technical skills, the government relied on temporary capacity‑building mechanisms. TOKTEN brought skilled Liberians home for short‑term service. The Liberia Emergency Capacity Building Support program recruited specialized consultants to help design systems in budgeting, procurement, and human resource management. The Senior Executive Service provided structured donor‑supported salaries for fewer than a hundred professionals leading key reforms. These mechanisms were deliberately temporary. They were bridges — scaffolding meant to be removed once domestic capacity strengthened (UNDP, 2011; Civil Service Agency, 2014; USAID, 2016).
Later, when I became Director General of the CSA, I participated in phasing these programs out. We did so not because they failed, but because they had accomplished their purpose. Liberia needed to rely on its own institutions — not permanently on donor‑funded parallel systems.
The Ebola crisis then exposed another fundamental truth. When thousands of employees were asked to stay home, ministries began identifying functions that were genuinely essential — and others that were not clearly tied to institutional mandates. This realization was painful. Yet the right‑sizing policy that followed emphasized fairness: counseling, retraining, and severance where necessary (Civil Service Agency, 2015a). Reform, we insisted, should not be punitive. It should be protective — protecting the future viability of the state.
Parallel to this effort, USAID’s Governance and Economic Management Support program modernized payroll systems, integrated databases, and helped eliminate ghost workers. These quiet technical achievements paved the way for later reforms such as harmonization (USAID, 2016).
Institutional reforms brought difficult debates. When Liberia established the Liberia Revenue Authority, we confronted a key question: should tax officials be paid differently than typical civil servants? Ultimately, we chose a distinct compensation model grounded in integrity and risk prevention. Collecting national revenue required higher ethical insulation — and appropriate professional pay supported that expectation (MFDP, 2019).
Fairness also advanced through a merit‑based recruitment policy. Positions were to be advertised openly. Candidates would compete. Decisions had to be documented. Public service was moving from patronage to profession (Civil Service Agency, 2015b). The Decent Work Act further reinforced labor standards across the nation, reminding everyone that employment — including public employment — was rooted in rights, not favors.
Even with these reforms, inequities persisted. Liberian‑dollar base pay remained low, while disparate dollar‑denominated allowances became a second, parallel compensation system. Two individuals performing identical work could earn significantly different net incomes. Reformers recognized this distortion but also recognized the political backlash that abrupt removal of allowances would generate.
Digital reform offered some relief. Live checks gave way to bank deposits, and mobile payment systems reduced leakage and improved accountability. Yet the central question remained — how could government pay people fairly without bankrupting itself?
By 2019, that question demanded an answer. The IMF warned that Liberia’s wage bill was absorbing resources needed for infrastructure, health, and education. Controlling it became central to macroeconomic stability (IMF, 2019). Meanwhile, the newly elected administration sought to fulfill promises of inclusion and expanded employment. Former Finance Minister Samuel D. Tweah later reflected that without harmonization, the CDC government “would have collapsed.” Harmonization thus emerged not simply as policy preference but as a negotiated survival strategy, reconciling fiscal constraints with political and social expectations.
The outcome was uneven but significant. Some employees gained financially. Others experienced reductions. Resistance surfaced, but the state moved closer to a unified, more transparent pay structure. For the first time in decades, compensation was guided largely by grade and function rather than historical accident or institutional bargaining power.
And yet, the work remains incomplete. As long as Liberia’s private sector remains limited, the state will carry unrealistic expectations as the main employer. Every reform will feel personal. Every payroll adjustment will risk political confrontation. Long‑term stability requires expanding opportunity beyond government — building an economy where employment, entrepreneurship, and innovation are widely possible.
Looking back, I see that reform worked best when rules replaced personalities, when clarity replaced negotiation, and when people felt respected even when change was uncomfortable. It failed when the payroll became a political instrument rather than a public contract.
The history of salary reform in Liberia is neither a story of triumph nor failure. It is a story of gradual rebuilding — of learning, adapting, correcting, and continuing. Most importantly, it is a reminder that fairness in public administration is never automatic. It must be designed, defended, and continually renewed.
References:
Civil Service Agency. (2008). Civil Service Reform Strategy (2008–2011). Government of Liberia.
Civil Service Agency. (2014). Annual report. Government of Liberia.
Civil Service Agency. (2015a). Policy on essential and non-essential employees. Government of Liberia.
Civil Service Agency. (2015b). Merit-based recruitment policy. Government of Liberia.
Government of Liberia. (2015). Decent Work Act. Ministry of Labour.
Government of Liberia & World Bank. (2014). Public Sector Modernization Project: Project appraisal document. World Bank.
International Monetary Fund. (2019). Liberia: Staff report — Selected issues (wage bill analysis). International Monetary Fund.
Ministry of Finance and Development Planning. (2019). Analysis of the public wage bill and harmonization policy.
Government of Liberia.
Republic of Liberia. (2015). Pay and Benefits Policy for the Civil Service. Civil Service Agency.
United Nations Development Programme. (2011). Transfer of Knowledge Through Expatriate Nationals (TOKTEN) evaluation report — Liberia. UNDP.
United States Agency for International Development. (2016). Governance and Economic Management Support (GEMS) final evaluation report. USAID.
World Bank. (2020). Liberia public expenditure review: Managing public spending for inclusive growth. World Bank.
