New Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf sits on her presidential chair during her inauguration ceremony at the Capitol Building in Monrovia on January 16, 2006. - REUTERS
MONROVIA (AP):
PRESIDENT ELLEN Johnson-Sirleaf has fired the entire staff of the Finance Ministry, a perceived centre of the corruption that has long hobbled war-battered Liberia.
Only weeks since taking over from a post-war transitional government, Africa's first-ever elected female president travelled to the ministry late Wednesday to personally deliver the mass sacking, state radio reported
yesterday.
"There will be changes here, there is no doubt about that," Sirleaf, a former Finance Minister, said in aired remarks. Sirleaf said all the dismissed employees would be allowed to reapply for their jobs, but called on those involved in graft "to disappear."
It was unclear how many employees were fired and government officials were not immediately available to comment.
VOW TO FIGHT CORRUPTION
Africa's 'Iron Lady' has vowed to aggressively fight corruption, a major factor behind a quarter century of political turmoil that turned what was once among Africa's richest nations into a pauper.
She won elections last year and took office January 16, replacing a transitional government widely viewed as corrupt as those it succeeded.
Top former officials were seen leaving ministry buildings with government property, including chairs and rugs, in the last days of their jobs, and many state vehicles purchased with international aid money now bear private licence plates as they tool the streets of the war-shattered capital, Monrovia.
Sirleaf has ordered all former ministers in the national unity government, which included former rebel commanders, to remain in the country pending a government audit.
As a main overseer of the transitional government's roughly US$100 million budget, largely donated by overseas agencies and states, many Liberians say the Finance Ministry lay at the heart of the problem - and cheered its purge yesterday.
