By Samuel Tweah, Jr. (former finance minister)
As the minister who presided over the harmonization reform, I welcome this review madam Pro Temp, particularly for the light it will shed on the misinformation and propaganda that affected the reform.
This is long overdue, and it is my hope the Speaker of the HOR embraces this review so that the country finally understands the honest facts and truths about harmonization, in order to bury the lies that are still lingering and end the impossible and illusory talk about reversing it.
I and my team will avail ourselves to the Senate for this review and we hope all other important stakeholders who played major roles, like our current Vice President Jeremiah K Koung, then Representative from Nimba; Senator J. Gbleh-bo Browne of Maryland County, former Representative Clarence Massaquoi of Lofa county, former Representative Edward Karfiah of Bong and Senator Francis K Dopoh, who was critical in drafting the National Standardization and Remuneration Act that codified Harmonization as the civil service reform law of the land.
As we undertake this important review, I am reminded of our meeting at the Farmington Hotel and of the difficulties we faced in bringing the wage bill to the goal of $296 million, which would have enabled us to reach the 1% of GDP target for public wage.
The consensus reached at Farmington, which we can call the Farmington Consensus was:
- No healthcare worker or teacher should be cut as we move toward our goal.
- The judiciary like, the legislature, would have to contribute its fair share of cuts but this was not possible except through a national law, hence the legal draft from Senator Francis Dopoh.
In the end, the Farmington Consensus was implemented. No healthcare workers were affected, and the judiciary was taxed.
Beyond generally protecting healthcare workers, harmonization did a lot for a whole class of specific healthcare workers of different categories.
First, there are the workers of from the hospital in Ganta that then Rep J Koung donated to the Government of Liberia. As a result of harmonization, Government took over the salary of these workers, and this important contribution helped Rep Koung to win his election in Nimba as Senator.
Then there was a group of rural workers paid under what was called the FIXED Amount Reimbursement Agreement or FARA. This means Government of Liberia would pay rural health workers and the U.S. Government through USAID would reimburse the Government.
Under the harmonization framework, we took over the payment of these health workers. The difference is they would now have to pay taxes and social security deductions, which was not the case when they were directly paid by USAID. These same tax rates and social security deductions were similarly applied to the more than 2,000 health workers President WEAH put on the payroll after Donors said the health pool Fund had dried up in 2018. These were the nurses who falsely sang in 2023 “you harmonized our pay we will harmonize your vote.”
The media and the public are encouraged to verify these accounts with the personalities named above and others who are not mentioned. As we go into the review, it would be interesting to watch how they would answer questions on the Farmington Consensus, or about whether the pay of healthcare workers and teachers were protected and why despite this protection nurses in 2023 sang “you harmonized our pay we harmonize your vote.”
It would also be interesting to know what meaning they would give to “reversing harmonization,” since this can never mean restoring the vast pay inequity Harmonization significantly solved, neither can it ever mean bringing back the Basic Salary and General Allowance salary duality that harmonization abolished, collapsing the two salaries into one and applying tax and social security rates to the combined total.
Nor could it ever mean ending taxation of health workers, ending their social security deductions, ending taxation of the judiciary or even removing “Koung-Ganta” hospital health workers from the GoL payroll.
Public debate on these important issues has never been more interesting than the pending harmonization review would afford. We eagerly await this review but ask the media to take the lead by asking those named above about their roles during harmonization.
I, Del Francis Wreh, our technical lead on harmonization, Benedict Kolubah and others in the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), Government have talked our own. It’s time for others like VP KOUNG and Francis Dopoh to talk their own too! We welcome this data-driven and evidence-based review.
