The Institute for Democratic Action & Development (IDAD), a local Civil Society Organization hired by the government of Liberia and sponsored by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) findings cataloged issues of corruptions and disservice ongoing at the local government levels, something that contravenes central government policies.
IDAD’s findings are the outcomes of key feedback meetings with funding gathered from five counties with support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in five counties: namely, Maryland, Bong, Margibi, Gbarpolu and Lofa respectively.
The findings presented by the IDAD Executive Director, Joseph Cheayan, are that some Agencies at the County Service Centers have dual accounts and two receipts in their service provisions in contravention to the PFM law.
“For example, the Center for National Document, Record, and archive (CNDRA) divide the Western marriage certificate money into two parts, 75 USD goes to Government revenue and the other 75 goes to the Agency Account,” findings said.
Section 4 of the Public Financial Management (PFM) Act, 2009 states: “That all cash, negotiable instruments, securities, and investments due to or raised, collected, received, made, or held by or for the Government shall form part of the Consolidated Fund. It further indicates that all taxes and non-tax revenue due to or raised, collected, received, made, or held by or for the Government shall be paid into the Consolidated Fund.
“The PFM also contains control measures of how funds received should be effectively and efficiently managed and expended at national, county, and municipal levels. There is a need for strong mechanism on how public Agencies and Ministries can collect revenue at the local Level to ensure transparency and accountability in revenue generation.” the Act states.
IDAD’s findings showed that “limited information on services many citizens are unaware of the kind of services and the cost of services or transactions at the County Service Centers (CSCs). This limited awareness has been because of capacity constraints on the part of all the CSCs to provide adequate public awareness on the services at the centers”.
IDAD report also showed that there is a barrier to access Services – resulting from CSCs being far away from citizens; Access to CSC still limited for many citizens. Some citizens travel as far 4-7 hours to access services, spending as much as 5,000 Liberian Dollars for a trip to a service center.
“Still the services are not even fully available to the Service Centers. Citizens pay money to transport service providers to Monrovia to print and sign documents before the full delivery of the service.”
“Insufficient staffing and bureaucratic delays; many line ministries have not transferred staff to the CSCs resulting in parts of their service being provided in the CSCs and parts from Monrovia and some ministries like the Liberia Biometric identification Registry and the Transport Ministry faced constraints to deliver services through CSCs due to inadequate personnel. The Liberia Biometric Identification Registry runs a mobile service in the County.”
“Logistical constrains CSCs are generally inadequately equipped, which affects the quality and reliability of services provided at CSCs. The Ministry of transport for example is not able to provide drivers licenses which were meant to be provided at the CSCs due to lack of specialized equipment to do so and other logistics,” the report indicated.
According IDAD, “Some services at the CSCs are very costly perhaps due to the mobile nature of the services. For example, the Citizens Identification Card that cost 5 USD in Monrovia is cost 1000 and 1500 LRD in the counties. Additionally, if a citizen carried 750 for the Citizen ID Card the service provider will demand 1000 LRD instead the 750LRD.”
The report said, the Citizens feedback mechanism platform is widely praised by the Liberian people but the greatest challenge is that many citizens are unable to provide feedback due to the associated costs both messaging and online. Many rural inhabitants lack the financial capacity to purchase internet data or credit on a regular basis, thus limiting their capacities to provide regular feedback to the system. Additionally, Citizens are not aware of the outcome of their feedback.
“Service Processing Time-Many Citizens are not aware about the actual time to process a certificate or any other document at the Service centers, thus limiting the Service Users to hold Service providers accountable on the delivery of services,” the report said.
IDAD recommended the following, assessing Communities Concerns with immediate effect, redress mechanisms must be developed, displayed, and implemented at all county service Centers. Procedures for handling complaints raised must be communicated to the service users to empower them and to enable them to hold officials accountable where necessary. Service users must also be informed of their right to review or appeal any decision taken by the County Service Centers.
“Service Centers to where service users live must be a major consideration by all the county Service Centers where norms exist for the closeness of the county service centers, these must be adhered to. Where they do not exist, they must be developed and implemented. Attention must also be given to the needs of the disabled and the elderly in accessing County service centers without any stress or delay.”
“The Government of Liberia should put measures in place to ensure Agencies Commissions and Ministries direct all funds into GOL accounts. A clear public education should be carried out if an Agency is allowed to do direct deposits in its account instead of GOL Account. If an unauthorized is caught in such act should be punished according to the Law,” Mr. Cheayean said.
In response to the allegation, the head of the Center for National Document, Record, and Archive (CNDRA), Emmanuel Lomax, could neither confirm nor deny the findings but said, the civil society organization should have sought audience with him to know why the so-called reported amount is divided.
But in direct response to the findings, the Internal Affairs Deputy Minister, Olagee Collins for Operations confirmed the dual accounts.
He said this is because of the challenges to get customers married certificate fast-tracked so as to avoid bottleneck (CNDRA often faces at the Ministry of Finance.
The background of the program states that the Liberian Government’s Pro-poor Agenda for Prosperity and Development (PAPD) insists on improving the provision of quality public services to all its citizens, especially those most vulnerable and marginalized.
Towards this, the Minister of State for Presidential Affairs, in March 2018, sought support from UNDP to design a performance management system that includes performance contracts signed between the President and key public officials. The aim is to ensure accountability of public officials, by having them commit to defined annual performance targets, along with achievement indicators that would be monitored and assessed.
Part of this system includes an online Citizens Feedback Mechanism (CFM) that allows citizens to share their experiences on public services delivery in real time and generates valuable data and information about services quality as bases for services delivery improvements. The CFM is a mobile and web-based platform that receives, compiles, analyzes and responds to citizens’ perceptions of public services standards, focusing on all the counties and County Service Centers (CSCs) in Liberia.
The CFM data base provides a robust depository of key data necessary for improving and informing overall policy on public service delivery, in line with the goals of the PAPD. The CFM fulfills three key functions. It provides information to citizens on the key services offered by the various Ministries Agencies and Commissions (MACs), through a system of broadcasts of regular info-bytes and notices; it receives citizens’ concerns and experiences of service delivery and verifies and channels them to concerned service providers for feedback and action, and thirdly, it contributes to the evidence base for assessing the performance of Key MACs under the Government’s Performance Management Contracts (PMCS), and towards overall improvement of delivery of public services and related policies, by maintaining a central database of citizens feedback, and generating and sharing a range of relevant analytic reports.
The project created awareness on the Citizens Feedback Mechanism and held feedback meetings on the county service Centers through Town Hall meetings and citizens engagements in five counties, namely, Bong, Lofa, Gbarpolu, Maryland and Margibi respectively. Prior to the filed activities, consultative meetings were held with key policymakers and stakeholders that included line Ministries, Agencies and Commissions, the Liberian Legislature most especially committees on good governance, Internal Affairs and Public Accounts. The project implementation in the counties, have been completed and project deliverables were strongly achieved.
