-A Recipe to Drive the ARREST Agenda at Local Levels
FROM THE DESK OF THE COMMUNICATION CONSULTANT/CSA
Bill K. Jarkloh
The nationwide credential audit of local government operatives by the Civil Service Agency (CSA) in collaboration with the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) is a necessity that has long been overdue. This is because the understanding of growth in the society by the local people in the village, towns, clans and district is propelled by the effectiveness and efficiency of local leaders, including district superintendents and commissioners as well as paramount, clan and town chiefs.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs in Liberia has a long historical background of dealing with the local governance and traditional issues in an the country, and has gone through several name changes its current nomenclature and form. It was initially known as the PARISH system starting from the foundation Republic of Liberia. The Ministry then became the Department Of Interior In 1927. As the nation grew, it was named Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Urban reconstruction in 1971, before finally being named Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1982, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs history.
Since its existence, nearly every district, clan, town and village has either a commissioner superintendent or a chief. All of these offices operate under the County Superintendent who is also supervised by the County Superintendent. What is not known, however, is whether or not these all of these local structure leaders are recipients of the green letters, or some self-imposed on their subjects as a matter of expediency. In whatever way, they serve as executive officials for the local people, and their leaderships have the propensity to influence development as it relates to the conduct of the governance system at those levels.
With this, the reformation processed initiated by the Civil Service Agency (CSA) under the stewardship of an industrial psychologist, Dr. Josiah F. Joekai, seemingly capture the need to ensure that the local government structures are run by the appropriate effective, efficient and qualified leaders and staff to preside over the ordinary Liberians in the villages, towns, districts and counties across the country.
Lest we lose focus, This credential audit embarked upon by the CSA in collaboration with the Ministry of Internal affairs is an apparent extension of the government’s human resource management Agency, the CSA’s flagship project, the Employees’ Status Regularization Project (ESRP) launched under the stewardship of Dr. Joekai initiates at Agency, which embraces civil service cleansing to bring to bed the needed professional workforce that will be effective for the nation building processes. The Employees Status Regularization Project, the mechanism used across the government to regularized the statuses of legitimate civil servants, rid the government of ghost names and unqualified personnel, double dippers, and political parties’ fanatics in some respect is beckoning the local government structures under the Internal Affairs Ministry. The Minister of Internal Affairs is therefore upbeat to conduct nationwide personnel credentials and verification exercise for Ministry’s staff across all 15 counties of Liberia.
Accordingly, the CSA-MIA partnership recently launched a nationwide personnel credentials and verification exercise for the Ministry’s staff across all 15 counties of Liberia to review employee files, collect essential data, and verify qualifications to enhance compliance, performance management, and decision-making processes within the Ministry.
Personnel credentials and verification exercise for staff of the Ministry of Internal Affairs across all 15 counties of Liberia will definitely re-enforce the effectiveness in the decision-making process at the grassroots level, where the need to ensure the scrupulous understanding and propagation of policy decisions by the government is an ardent imperative to the local executive leaders, including governors – as some may be referred to at the local level of governors.
One of the interesting benefits of this exercise, in my view, is that it will leverage the settlement of leaderships in some of the local terrains for calm and the inducement of development initiatives that are being forestalled to some extent. This benefit will harness quality, explore innovation and sensibility to the national ARREST Agenda for Inclusive Development (AAID). For fact, it is no secret that one of the drivers of development in a country is the sensitivity of its people about their needs, and such sensitivity of the people in general is overseen by the local government operatives who the people look up to for direction. It is against this backdrop that the need for local government operatives to be qualified, professional, effective and efficient at work cannot be over emphasized.
Accordingly, personnel credentials and verification exercise for Internal Affairs Ministry staff across all 15 counties of Liberia is important to the in as much as local leaders and staff, including the paramount, clan and town chiefs are the conduits of public policies and development agenda to and from the people. They are responsible to interpret policies from above to the people and ensure the people are accountable to their government and the government is equally accountable to the people.
For this reason, it was prudent that CSA Director General Dr. Joekai who spoke at the official commissioning ceremony of the exercise emphasized the significance of the exercise in promoting professionalism and accountability in public service, and let me add AT THE LOCAL LEVEL.
“This exercise is not just about data collection—it’s about building a reliable and accountable civil service,” Dr. Joekai said, and added, “It also serves as a precursor to a broader, nationwide credential review and verification process for all Ministry of Internal Affairs staff.”
The Minister of Internal Affairs, Hon. Francis Sakila Nyumalin, is the present supreme supervisor of all the local government structures of Liberia. He also addressed the event. He expressed appreciation for the CSA’s support in implementing the initiative. This expression takes cognizance of the fact that the Minister himself was thinking about the verification of the credentials of the local government employees. And so he described the exercise as a critical step toward institutional reform and workforce development.
Set to begin on August 18, the verification process destined to will cover staff in all 15 counties and underscores the government’s ongoing commitment to transparency, efficiency, and improved public service delivery. We are hopeful that this process will touch every nook and cranny of the society, so that a new generation of chiefs, district commissioners and superintendents will be structured to drive the ARREST agenda for inclusive development at the local level.
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