Monitor Newspaper

Civil service built on “patronage culture’

-President Johnson Sirleaf

A two-day development workshop on Civil Service Reform Strategy has opened in Monrovia with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf describing the state of the civil service in Liberia as deplorable.

The President observed that the Service has historically been built on a strong public administration patronage culture, with a weak macro-economic policy formulation infrastructure, in an enabling working environment.

Ironically, the Liberian leader noted, the Service has, in recent years, been neglected by the very government it was meant to serve with capacity and morale been at its lowest ebb.

According to an Executive Mansion release, the opening session of World Bank/DFID sponsored-workshop was addressed by President Sirleaf who said the core mass of the public service must be reversed and maintained that the country can not make any meaningful progress in reconstructing political institutions, rehabilitating social and economic infrastructures, and meeting the millennium development goals, if the Civil Service is not reformed.

“The Civil Service, with its bureaucracy and technical skills and competencies, is the heart of government business. It is in this context, that the structure, policies, operations and orientation of the civil service should be reformed”, the President said.

The President described the development of a Civil Service Reform Strategy as the most essential ingredient in the process of reforms. She welcomed the consultations and expressed the hope that Liberians will take ownership of the process.

The opening session was also addressed by United States ambassador to Liberia, Donald Booth, UK Department for International Development (DFID) Country Representative, Desmond Curran, and Ishack Diwuan, World Bank Country Director.

At Tuesday’s plenary session, chaired by the President, presentations were made by the Director-General of the Civil Service Agency, Dr. C. William Allen, Finance Minister, Dr. Antoinette Sayeh, Planning Minister, Dr. Toga McIntosh, and LRDC National Coordinator, Natty B. Davies, among others.

The two-day workshop has brought together political leaders, civil servants, civil society, international partners and other stakeholders for a national consultation on the civil service. The workshop aims at identifying and agreeing on strategic priorities and policy options to achieve government vision to modernize and re-establish a well-functioning civil service in Liberia.