The Minister of Finance and Development Planning, Augustine K. Ngafuan, and the former Minister of Finance, Samuel Tweah, have been verbally wrestling over the reversal of the Harmonization Policy, with Ngafuan arguing that the Boakai administration has begun the reversal of the policy, beginning with the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission (LACC) and the General Auditing Commission (GAC). However, Tweah claims that the Harmonization Policy did not affect anti-graft institutions.
Recently on Class Reloaded, Minister Ngafuan said, “We have reversed harmonization at LACC. This year, in this budget, we have reversed harmonization at the GAC. For the Supreme Court bench and judges, we have also reversed harmonization. Workers of the DEA will receive pay increases this year. In this budget, we are moving gingerly.”
However, Tweah has argued that LACC and GAC were never harmonized, because they already had one pay system. “The harmonization reform only applied a standard pay grade to their pay system. This means they were now following a rule-based system to hire and pay people, not the arbitrary discretion of paying outside a generally enforced equity-enhanced rule-based pay grade.”
According to Tweah, “Since they were integrity institutions, the LACC and GAC were never subjected to the control exercised upon the more than 100 GOL entities that are part of central Government.
“Secondly, as we have said time and again, ‘reversing harmonization’ is not ‘increasing salary’. In its first year, harmonization increased the salary of 15,000 workers and over the next three years about 45,000 GOL workers got a pay increase, including UL instructors whose pay went up by more than 60%.”
He observed that reversing harmonization means bringing back the Basic Salary and General Allowance systems that harmonization ended.
