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Downsize
with compassion
Sunday,
June 25, 2006
By
Tewroh-Wehtoe Sungbeh
I don't know
what I would do if I didn’t have a job and begin to
beg total strangers who don't even know me, and don't
have it to give me food to eat or money to live for
another day.
That is a terrible feeling and an unfortunate
way to live as a beggar in one’s own country,
especially when it is well known that people are broke
and hungry in Liberia not because they don’t want to
work, but because of the obvious lack of available
jobs – any job that will sustain that person and his
or her extended relatives who depend solely on them
for survival.
I don’t claim to have tons of money sitting
in a bank somewhere, but I have a job and at least a
dollar in my pocket right now to buy a bottle of water
or whatever I can get with that dollar at a
neighborhood convenience store to quench my thirst.
But when you are unemployed in Liberia, a naked
dollar is a whole lot to carry around in one’s
pocket to buy a snack because it’s not there, or
“it’s not easy” as the saying goes, and some of
us with what they called pride cannot survive in that
country by going around begging another person for
alms to feed one’s needs, when he or she is healthy
enough to fend for themselves and provide for their
family like human beings supposed to do.
The recent downsizing of civil servants by
the Johnson-Sirleaf administration, which supposed to
trim the workforce is a wake-up call for countless
individuals who must now ponder where in that country,
with less and less opportunities in the private sector
they will now have to find employment.
Not that a bloated workforce packed with ghost
workers, and also a victim of decades of ineptitude
and corruption shouldn’t be scrutinized for waste
and efficiency. It should.
However, the Sirleaf administration, with its
mandate to trim and perhaps re-invent the civil
service to bring it up to par with civil service
workers worldwide should exercise extreme caution and
show compassion as they go about laying people off, so
as not to turn what seems to be a good idea into a
tragic one.
A situation of this kind don’t bode
well for the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf administration and
the country, because with the existing unemployment
rate standing stubbornly at 85 percent, any addition
to that number is troubling and a threat to the
nation’s national security.
Because an unemployed person walking around
hungry and broke, and who cannot afford to feed his or
her family is a broken person who will have
self-esteem problem and will find it very hard to
understand what’s going on, especially when there is
no safety nest put in place by the government to hold
that person up and together.
And when there is that much frustration and
downtown on one’s hand (as is the case with the
laid-off civil service employees and the former
fighters), individuals tend to be vulnerable to the
influences around them, which can certainly lead them
into crimes and other illegal activities they
wouldn’t have engaged in had they been gainfully
employed.
Laying these people off is easy as we watched the government
did so quickly weeks ago, but finding them work is a
difficult task, and the government will have to do
something about those unemployed Liberians and the
other out-of-work individuals - the former fighters,
who must be adequately rehabilitated, educated and put
to work immediately to avoid a national disaster.
During her May 27 Atlanta visit, President
Sirleaf was asked about the government’s future plan
for the civil service employees and what’s she doing
about the issue. She responded by saying that her
administration is restructuring the civil service and
would retrain the workers for future employment. Great
answer, but is it possible? And how soon will it be?
The Johnson-Sirleaf administration has a
responsibility to trim the workforce. Equally so, the
government also have a responsibility to find work for
those who are being thrown out of work.
Some of the laid-off individuals who actually
are not ghost workers have been dedicated government
workers for as long as three decades, with some
working for a decade or two, or all of their lives
working to earn a living.
The government cannot just throw people in the
street and behave as if the individuals, who perhaps
are the only breadwinners in their families don’t
exist at all. Those people also have to eat and feed
their families.
This is a national security issue, and the
government must act immediately before it is too late.
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