By S. Siapha Mulbah
Some marketers at various market places in Montserrado County have described the Liberia Marketing Association (LMA) as a means of income generation for few persons who are using the name and finances of the institution for their personal aggrandizement, noting that the huge sum of money collected from them have no impact on them nor the institution.
“The LMA has basically become an institution of revenue generation for the higher-ups and trashing the concerns of the ordinary sellers who are striving to earn daily meals for their families,” a coal seller at the Rally Time Market, who preferred anonymity, said.
She noted that the only objective of the LMA is the collection of daily fees from sellers, with no care for the welfare of the marketers or the sanitation of the market buildings.
“Their only concern is to collect money from us every day to put in their pocket and their lappa nose, but they don’t care about us who they are collecting the money from. Look at me here selling coal to support my family and see the place I am sitting to sell. You nah think that this place supposed to look good?” she asked rhetorically.
She accused some authorities of the LMA of using their hard-earned money to build huge properties and live lavishly with their families while they, the marketers, and their families, remain poor and destitute.
For her part, Ma Lorpu Flomo explained that the cost for one selling spot in the market buildings has drastically increased, which is a challenge to most persons wanting to obtain a selling spot.
She advised that as a parent body to all marketers in Liberia, LMA should seek the welfare of the marketers, improve infrastructure, and create a platform for every member of the association to benefit from the proceeds of the organization.
Another lady who asked to speak on anonymity, a meat seller at the Rally Time market, explained that the leadership of the Liberia Marketing Association presides over the market as administrators only in the case of money donations and collecting table and ticket fees every day.
She added that, every day, the owners of every table in the confines of the market buy ticket for L$20 per table. Every Friday, a table owner pays L$70 per table, but the marketing association, over the years, has refused to give account to those raising the monies on how it is being used.
She said, “We are paying ticket fees, maintenance fees, every time, this fee, that fee. Every Friday we pay for each of our tables, but we cannot see anything done with the money that the LMA is collecting from us. This is corruption in broad daylight, but any attempt to express your feeling on the running of the organization, you automatically become the target of the LMA. So, we are silent, because this is where we get our daily bread from.
While the running of the LMA remains a concern to most marketers, the prices of goods, especially during festive seasons such as the July 26 and Christmas celebrations, have caught their attention. Ma Marie, who sells before a store in Vai Town, complained that foreign stores and wholesale warehouses will increase the prices of commodity drastically, to the disadvantage of the local business people, saying, “They are even doing wholesale and retail with us and it is making things hard for us who are doing from hand to mouth market; that is, we buy to sell for small profit. But these Indians and Lebanese people are even selling candy in the street.
“I been selling here for more than 10 years, during Christmas season the markets we selling prices can always drop, but now, things prices are increasing and we don’t have anyone to engage the importers that making things hard for us,” she said.
She added that the advocacy role of the marketing association has not been witnessed, a situation, she explained, that will lead to an unspecified action of local vendors throughout the nation to call government’s attention to the arising crisis.
“We want the government to take this marketing association thing from here and manage the market through one ministry that will be responsible to develop the system. Dirt will pile up all over the place and make big hills, but to see the people that taking maintenance to clean it becomes difficult. They only suppressing us with the little profits we making by cutting it every day,” she asserted.
In response to the concerns and allegations against the marketing association, the institution’s National Public Relations Officer, Morris D. Browne, described it as comical to hear marketers raising questions over the income generated by the LMA and raising false accusations.
He noted that the marketing association sells ticket to those selling in its facility to have basic operations covered and staff paid for the job and service they render, such as security hired to serve guard at the facility, fixing doors and other parts of the buildings that encounter problems.
“Imagine, with the hundreds of workers the association has nationwide, its payroll is strictly financed through these little funds generated from tickets. We also use the money to cover the daily expenditure of the institution,” he intimated.
Brown explained that there were no doors to the entries of some market places constructed by the government, including Duala Market, and the leadership of the association financed the cost of the doors to those buildings to keep the goods that are kept there safe during the night.
“The maintenance fees they pay are for the garbage control, which is supervised by the market’s leadership. When the LMA is taking up major development in any of our markets, they are not asked for extra funding. These are allegations that have no backing,” he noted.
