THE ADMINISTRATION OF President George Manneh Weah has, as yet, not given the Liberian people the financial details of international partners and the Weah government’s support to the fight against the COVID-19 viral disease. This has claimed the attention of pro-transparency sections of the public, which are now responding to the need for transparency on the matter. The “Covid-19 Transparency and Accountability Project (CTAP)” has therefore surfaced, being implemented by BudgIT-Liberia in partnership with YARD-Liberia, Follow The Money, Libpedia, Volunteer Hub Liberia, and other rights policy advocacy institutions. According to BudgIT-Liberia’s Country Representative, Abraham Varney, CTAP is also being implemented across ten African countries, and is intended to promote accountability and transparency by tracking Covid-19 interventions made so far by the government and international partners.
“IT WILL STIMULATE public conversation, ensuring proper accountability and transparency of funding and finances donated to the fight against Covid-19 during the public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC),” Abraham Varney said.
AMIDST THE GLOBAL health emergency caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, multinational institutions, NGOs, INGOs, governments and development partners have contributed millions of dollars to the fight against Covid-19. However, corruption within public services deepens people’s suspicions of government’s health actions, and undermines health-care access. When new diseases such as Ebola and Covid-19 emerge, a lack of accountability and transparency in the utilization of intervention funds can also result in public distrust and confidence in government’s effort to fight the pandemic.
“NOW, THEREFORE, BUDGIT-LIBERIA, as an integrity-driven institution that promotes transparency and accountability, plans to implement the tracking of Covid-19 project funds in a collaborative, yet transparent and accountable, manner in Liberia. This project is aimed at assessing the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 funds that came to Liberia. The project runs from January to October of 2021.
“THE CTAP, WHEN implemented, will help to achieve the following: ensure that all contributions made to the Government of Liberia (GOL) to fight against Covid-19 are tracked and monitored; ensure proper accountability of finances from the receiving of these finances up to the final expenditure, as well as reporting; appraise certain expenditures that go beyond certain threshold as prescribed by the Public Financial Management Law and the Public procurement Concession Commission laws and procedures; and ensure that the government makes public all expenditures of Covid-19 financing to ensure open accountability and transparency.”