—Wants PFM Law amended putting a cap on public spending, as he Digs deep into 1.2 billion Draft Budget
IPNEWS: The Movement For Progressive Change (MPC), Political Leader, Simeon Freeman is calling for the amendment of the Public Financial Law of Liberia to ensure a cap on public spending by public officials if Liberia should move towards national development and recovery.
Mr. Freeman stated that the draft National Budget proffered nothing for the ordinary people but the powerful alone.
“Take for instance these guys are good at talking, and you know empty drum makes the most noise when they talk you, you think they have some substance when they present a document it’s so empty you see nothing and all of the emptiness under the Unity party governors can proffered. The country appear to be a hopeless infrastructure but let’s do a comparative analysis while ministry of State gets 1.3 million dollars for special operations services 1.3 million whatever they want to do special operation services but we get 500 000 under the psrp anticipated to come from a meter 200 million to buy chairs for students but President Boakai doesn’t have to wait he’s going to get 1.3 million dollars for special operation. But why the old man will not jog that kind of money is enough to make you jump off on your bed 850 000 dollars on special presidential projects so even a Boakai can buy cars for his girlfriends is all part of the special presidential projects 361 thousand dollars for fuel and lubricants of vehicles ministry of state 300 000 on celebrations 300 000 on furniture and fixtures this budget has shown where the government priorities while our education and health is less of interest.
let’s go further the total allotment to take care of the president and vice president is is EPS 9.1 million dollars and we’ll go into the EPS budget so you can begin to ask them the hard questions ministry of state 15.1million if you put this together just the executive mansion has for Boakai and his protection for he and VP KOUNG gets 24.2 million dollars this is outrageous and when you look at the allotment of health and it’s amazing so let’s look at the educational worker salary like i said out of that budget of 53 they get 37.9 million while educational worker salary the total spending education for 2024 is going to be 15.6 and the 15.6 million is less the anticipated inflow of 4.5 million dollars anticipated from the ArcelorMittal arrangement so in essence we’re spending about 11.1 million dollars on education this year which is really sad but let’s do an analysis of the EPS budget the EPS budget is 6.4 million dollars on salaries .
It confuses me you guys have friends in the EPS they don’t make one thousand dollars but even if every EPS officer was earning one it means that if you divide one thousand by 6.4 million it means you got 6400 EPS personnel it’s bigger than the army it’s bigger than the national police why do you need 6400 persons so how much people in the EPS is something that you need to ask you see these things to do they will hide extra expenses in certain structures and make it look like the executive mansion is small or the state budget is small but then they hide through these things why will salaries for the EPS be 6.4 million why i really don’t understand if you if you took one thousand dollar salary it mean one EPS officer makes almost 10 times what a police officer makes.
These are really critical issues we urge the public to demand and understand security police army all of them NSA all contribute in detachment for these people so you have all of these structures why do you need to be spending all this money on this there is no justification spending 9.1 million dollars when education has no presence in the budget interestingly 550 two thousand dollars the EPS spends on fuel and lubricants more than what is allotted for education oh god help Liberia we spent 20,000 on curriculum development we spent 28,000 for teachers training but we spent 350 three thousand dollars for repairs and maintenance EPS vehicle 550 two thousand for the fuel and lubricants six hundred thousand dollars for intelligence gathering just for the office of the president, but we spent one hundred thousand dollars on the hospital in Grand Bassa county that services more than a hundred thousand.
My intention here is to help you see that this budget is for the people that we put in government when they collect the money they sit down they divide it out then they get up and buy 15 seated 35 buses and the president now thinks he’s made news you know he grabs the rise oh the people should celebrate him and the people say look we’re not celebrating you because we know that are no different from the people.
You then we have another situation we have another situation we have another 200k for operations for the EPS the EPS 800k but three 1.3 million dollars provided for basic and secondary education in liberia like i said do a comparison with the ministerial health budget it’s a joke i could go visit him from there so Grand Bassa county and foyah gets they see hundred thousand dollars then there is something called as other compensations which caught my attention a jump from 6.9 million dollars uh in 2024 for 21.4 million in 2025 now is 25.6 million dollars i’m not sure what they’re hiding through there.
ladies and gentlemen of the of the of the media and my people in radio land this analysis is long but because of time um we will do a short abbreviation and we just want to say to correct this we’re proposing the PFM law be modified and a cap be set on government expenditure other than that even if we collect five million the legislature budget will jump to say 200 million and then we have justification the president budget will jump to say 300 million and they will have all of the justification this other institution will jump to this and all of the justifications each private radio station in this time surviving lbs get 1.9 millions of government money but the citizens can’t talk.
You know these are the things that are playing the waves they want some abuse of power and i just want to say to our people as president of liberia you see the Executive mansion, i will turn into a five-star hotel i don’t need to be in such an elaborate infrastructure. it’s been proven that you can run the executive mansion right under the mission of foreign affairs you can run the executive marshal on a small place why do we need a whole ministry of state just for presidential affairs and it’s a place where different people or how many look even me now as CEO with more than 5 000 employees across africa in multiple countries don’t really have a special assistant i have different departments different heads of different sections in the world why do we need a president to have such elaborate infrastructure the sooner we review this the better the budget will begin to work for us and for the people. MPC Political Leader stated.
