By George K. Werner (former education minister)
Liberia is debating one of the most consequential reforms to its maritime sector since independence: restructuring our ports, dissolving the centralized National Port Authority, and replacing it with autonomous port administrations overseen by a national regulator. The intention behind these reforms is compelling.
The draft law itself states that it seeks to create an independent sea and inland ports regulatory authority and to facilitate a safer, orderly, and transparent development of port facilities and services.
That aspiration is worthy. Our current structure is overly centralized, slow to respond, and too dependent on Monrovia. Giving ports more operational autonomy, while establishing a regulator to ensure fairness and safety, aligns with models that have worked elsewhere in the world. Liberia should not turn away from that goal.
But reform must be judged not only by what it promises, but by whether the legal architecture supporting it is clear, coherent, and practical. On that standard, the current package of bills does not yet pass. The most troubling weakness lies in how the transition is designed.
The legislation moves quickly toward dissolving the National Port Authority, while leaving many unresolved questions about pensions, liabilities, outstanding contracts, staff redeployment, and legal exposure.
The drafts envision a short transitional working group, but do not spell out in detail how existing obligations will be honored or managed. That is not reform planning; it is administrative shock therapy. No country dismantles a major public institution without first establishing a legally grounded roadmap for continuity.
A second problem concerns institutional overlap. The proposed regulator is granted extensive powers over safety, inspection, compliance, and access to port facilities.
Those provisions exist alongside the long-standing statutory responsibilities of the Liberia Maritime Authority, which already interfaces with international conventions and maritime standards. Creating two agencies with the ability to issue directives in the same space will not produce clarity. It will create friction, confusion, and the potential for conflicting instructions — the very opposite of what efficient port governance requires.
When the President returned the bills, he did so out of concern that they risked producing contradictions, overlapping mandates, and administrative uncertainty that could undermine efficiency rather than enhance it. Those concerns should be taken seriously, not dismissed as caution for its own sake.
Liberia has confronted similar institutional transitions before — and we learned valuable lessons. When the country decided to establish the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, the Legislature did not simply approve the law and hope everything would work out.
Lawmakers summoned the Chair of the Governance Commission, Dr. Amos Sawyer, the Minister of Justice, Cllr. Christiana Tah; the Minister of Finance, Amara Mohamed Konneh; along with the Director-General of the Civil Service Agency and the Director-General of the Liberia Institute of Public Administration.
Their message was simple: produce a roadmap. They wanted clarity on redundancies, protections for pensions and benefits, transfers to the Liberia Revenue Authority, and plans for employees who could not be absorbed.
We met repeatedly at the Civil Service Agency on Carey Street and produced that roadmap — and it became the blueprint for all subsequent restructuring across ministries, agencies, and commissions. Because we planned ahead, we avoided the kind of institutional chaos that destroys morale and drains public confidence.
Even so, I vividly remember the day the courtyard of the new ministry filled with anxious workers. We stood there with loudspeakers, not to spin a story, but to explain, step by step, what would happen to their jobs, their income, and their future. That is what responsible reform looks like: institutions change, but people and the credibility of the state are not left hanging.
The President’s decision to withhold approval reflects the same instinct for responsible sequencing. Moving ahead without a defined transition mechanism risks operational disruption, legal challenges, and uncertainty for employees and concession partners.
These bills, in their present form, could destabilize port operations, weaken clarity in regulatory oversight, and expose the state to unexpected liabilities at home and abroad. That is too much risk for reforms that otherwise carry merit.
The choice we face is not between reform and stagnation. It is between rushed reform that collapses under its own contradictions, and disciplined reform that can endure. The President should therefore not sign these bills until the loopholes are resolved. This is not obstruction; it is stewardship.
The Legislature should revisit the drafts, establish a formal transition authority, clearly define the boundaries between the new regulator and the Liberia Maritime Authority, embed protections for workers and contractual partners, and correct the drafting inconsistencies that now leave space for confusion.
Liberia does need more efficient and transparent ports. Decentralization, done well, can unlock local economic potential, reduce bottlenecks, and restore public confidence.
But decentralization without a roadmap is not reform. It is disruption — and disruption serves no one. The lesson from our own institutional history is simple: reform succeeds when it is disciplined, sequenced, and grounded in clear law. That kind of reform not only changes systems; it lasts.
