President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on Wednesday February 18, 2015 launched the National Deconcentration Platform in Salala Bong County. The program was graced by high level government officials including representatives of the National Legislature and Cabinet Ministers, the Doyen and members of the Diplomatic Corps, heads of national and international non-governmental organizations and donor partners, and local government officials from all of Liberia's fifteen counties.
The Deconcentration Platform details sector specific services to be immediately moved from the Capital, Monrovia, to the Counties to: a) assure tangible improvements in the lives and environments of the Liberian people and b) a fast moving process to improve the quality and access to services. The launch of the deconcentration platform assures of government's determination and commitment to an holistic people-centered development oriented reforms making Liberians active partners in the delivery of services and in the governance of their communities and counties. President Sirleaf noted that:“this is also meant to send a clear and strong message that our country is on course and bouncing back, mighty and strong, in spite of the ravages that faced us from the Ebola enemy”.
This government, in successive years, has undertaken numerous initiatives to enhance decentralization and local area development. Notably among these are:
a) County Development Fund - The government established, for the first time in this country's history, the County Development Fund, which is directly under the control of the county authorities for development purposes. The government also introduced the Social Development Fund, contributed by concessions, to augment the County Development Fund.
b) Security Hub - Government has erected security hub in Gbarnga and plans to erect, along with its partners, four more around Liberia to ensure the enhancement of security, law and order (without which no development can take place) and provide equal access to justice.
c) Establishment of school boards - local school boards have been established in school districts across the country. Other line Ministries and agencies have joined government's decentralization plan geared toward service delivery and strengthening local governance in rural Liberia. To promote small farmers, County Agriculture Offices are being established, while the Ministry of Gender and Development has already embarked upon a program to erect safe houses in counties, and postal and banking services have been established in several counties.
Despite the ravages of Ebola pandemic, considerable progress has also been made in restoring and establishing health facilities and strengthening county- based health care capacity. President Sirleaf, speaking in Gbarnga at the Deconcentration Platform Launch, admitted that government, at the time, did not factor into its responses the critical element of community capacity and preparedness in the wake of a health pandemic like that of Ebola.
After more than a century of centralization in Liberia, a successful decentralization implementation will need time and the collective support of citizens. In many countries, decentralization reforms have required decades to unfold. But despite our numerous differences and criticisms, government remains positive about the success of Liberia's decentralization process.President informed the Deconcentration launch that decentralization implementation in Liberia will be carried out in three phases.
“We have laid out our Decentralization Reform Agenda to be pursued in phases. Our first phase is to continue to move the delivery of public services out of Monrovia to county centers and to do so in an efficient and coordinated manner to ensure that at the county level we build synergies among the service delivery ministries and agencies of government so that our people can be served more effectively. We look to the day, very soon, when teachers will no longer be told to come to Monrovia to attend educational matters; when our local business people will meet all the requirements for starting up and running their businesses from the counties and will not have to come to Monrovia to register or to do other businesses to carry on; when civil servants will not be told that the processing of their personnel action notices and other documents related to their employment are delayed due to the fact that their paperwork requires approval from Monrovia. With the recent enactment of the Liberia Revenue Authority and its anticipated advent to the counties, we look to the day, very soon, when local administrators will have certain amount of fiscal authority in raising revenues to finance local development activities. That first phase is what we have started with the Deconcentration Platform.”
The second phase of the decentralization program is devolution of certain powers/authority which involves the sharing of limited political authority with local governance institutions. This also involves the election of superintendents, local councils, some sub-county officials and vesting them with authority, and encouraging them to do what is necessary, at the local level, without fragmentation that will retard development. Relevant government institutions including the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Governance Commission, with support from the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning have already studied and crafted a draft Local Governance Bill to be submitted to the Legislature for passage into law.
Other important factors of decentralization include the effective delivery of public services in a coordinated manner that builds synergies require adequate public facilities such as a government center in rural Liberia to assure proximity of government institutions so that their operations and maintenance can benefit from economies of scale while making their services more accessible to the local population. The president said this process has already begun.
“In this respect, an important part of our decentralization program is to establish government centers in all counties as our resources will allow. We already have one or two, including Maryland and Grand Bassa. This will be a major undertaking to which we will commit our resources. We will also need the support of our development partners, and with the support of the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning and all of our ministries and agencies with development functions will be required to work together to come up with a strategy that will enable us to carry out this objective. As we today launch our National Deconcentration Platform, we thank all of you, the development partners who have contributed to this work and to our development agenda in general. More importantly, our thanks go to the Liberian people for their guidance, their support, their patience and their participation. It is only through the involvement of people, through their ownership of the processes of development and decentralization, can this become an historic undertaking.”
At the same time President Sirleaf, during the deconcentration launch, issued a number of executive directives meant to actualize government's visions at the official launch of the “Deconcentration Platform” in Gbarnga, Bong County recently. Under the presidential executive directives, government ministries were identified and designated certain Administrative, Fiscal and Political tasks to quicken the implementation of decentralization in Liberia. Also, like manyothers, President Sirleaf commended the Chairman of the Governance Commission, Dr. Amos Sawyer, for being the driving force behind the decentralization plan in Liberia.
“Deconcentration Implementation Executive Directives:
Administrative Directives:a. County superintendents, from this day, are conferred with the authority to coordinate and manage the delivery of services in their county. All ministries and agencies staff deployed to the counties, while continuing to be employed by their line ministries and agencies, fall under the coordination of the County Superintendent administratively, and get technical guidance from the line ministry in Monrovia.
b. The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), in coordination and collaboration with all Ministries and Agencies, shall immediately coordinate a process to harmonize the finance, procurement, human resource, audit and monitoring and evaluation of services in the County to avoid the multiplication of these services in each ministry and agency.
c. The MIA is directed to begin the process of developing a professional local government civil service with support from the Civil Service Agency.
d. The line ministries and agencies shall delegate authority for the implementation of agreed county-based projects to heads of line ministry's county-based implementation units who will then operate within the local coordinating mechanism.
Fiscal Directives:To achieve the above administrative reforms which will only be successful if they are complimented by the fiscal measures. Ministry of Finance and Development Planning will therefore be called upon:a. Expedite the establishment of County Treasuries, beginning with the 4 already identified and proceeding quickly to rest of the Counties.b. To make it possible for all government employees to receive their salaries in their County Headquarters. This directive is intended to provide support to Ministries like Education and Health who have to a large extent already deconcentrated, but whose quality of services hampered by the movement of staff to and from Monrovia in pursuit of their salaries.
Political Directives:a. Our final goal is a Liberia that is decentralized and therefore deconcentration should not become the end product. Implementing decentralization requires the establishment of a legal and regulatory framework. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Governance Commission are already working to finalize the few outstanding details on the draft Local Government Act. Our aim is to get this to the Legislature as quickly as possible.
b. To my colleagues, members of the Legislative Caucuses:This is an opportunity for you to be the torch bearers of the transformation of our nation and people. For those of you who are newly elected – everything about deconcentration and decentralization is what you promised in your campaigns. I know that all of you are already on-board and will do everything in your power to actualize this reform. We will need you to makethe right decisions about budgetary allocation but the streamlining of resources to make deconcentration possible to allow the autonomy and independence of the coordinating mechanisms through the superintendents will take place without interference.
c. To the Ministers and all functionaries of Government:What you have crafted and I have launched today, the National Deconcentration Platform, is a monitoring and evaluation tool to follow your implementation progress which as chairperson of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Decentralization, I will follow and monitor day by day.
To the Superintendents, Mayors, Commissioners, and Traditional Leaders:To you Superintendents, it is really you that are on the spot. If we get it wrong we are in serious trouble [because it will be recentralization]. If we get it right the credit will be taken by you and the people. The executive is entrusting you with increased responsibility so as to be the bridge to the people. We promise you that we will make every effort to adequately prepare and capacitate you for this new role.
To the custodians of our traditions and cultures, we count on you to lead us in this process and confer it with the legitimacy, dignity and honor that you symbolize in our communities.
To our Partners:We proffer our thanks for your relentless and continual support to our effort to achieve our developmental goals and objectives. We implore you to continue especially for our Decentralization Reform Agenda.
To Dr. Sawyer, the architect of decentralization, the power pressure of governance reform, thank you for your persistence and patriotism.
To all of us, it is my pleasure to officially launch our National Deconcentration Platform, which is our call to duty, and social contract with our people. Thank you.” The decentralization plan and other reforms taking place in Liberia have given cause for Constitutional amendments. TheLaw Reform Commission is expected to help craft the necessary Constitutional amendments required for these reforms including those related to local governance to be fully implemented. These amendments will later be submitted to the public through a referendum for approval.
President Sirleaf has observed, among other things, that one of the lessons learned, as a result of Ebola and key to the Deconcentration process is that it is important to ensure that local capacity is adequate to support the transfer of public services to local jurisdictions. She said failure to have adequate local capacity is often a basis for recentralization. Madam Sirleaf noted that government is endeavoring to avoid this pitfall by exploring and seeking innovative ways that can respond directly to our national developmental and capacity needs to manage a system of government that is decentralized.