Government takes aim at unemployment

The Liberian government has completed a short-term national poverty reduction plan to tackle the country's massive unemployment.

The plan, a copy of which was obtained by IRIN, outlines four key areas of poverty alleviation, but principally centres on job creation.

Other aspects of the plan include rehabilitation of basic infrastructures, revitalising the country's shattered economy, building a post-war security system to consolidate peace, and delivering basic social services such as healthcare, road systems, water and electricity.

A 14-year civil war battered the country's basic social services.

The World Bank estimates that over three-quarters of Liberia’s three million population live below the poverty line of US$1 per day. The government estimates that 80 percent of Liberians do not work in the formal sector.

Health facilities lack staff, medicines and equipment, and schools are limited with overcrowded classrooms and unqualified teachers thus making those services limited to the population.

"There is the immediate need to build a strong economy with job opportunities, led by a robust recovery of the private sector, particularly in agriculture, mining, minerals, forestry and the rubber industry," the government plan said.

Rubber remains a major source of export earnings for Liberia even though United Nations Security Council sanctions on timber have been lifted, but logging operations are yet to resume. There are still sanctions on diamond mining.

On reviving the economy, the strategy paper said: "A key measure will be support to the informal sector, now a dominant part of the economy and where the majority of women and the poor earn their livelihoods through increased access to credit.”

"In the short to medium term, the focus is on significant job creation and employment," the report said.

But according to President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, one overarching aim of the poverty reduction plan is to enable the country to break away from its violent past.

"Liberia is not a poor country, but rather is a country that has been managed poorly over the years...the poverty reduction strategy will deepen democracy and ensure peace and prosperity and debt relief,” she said.

The president said although some countries, led by the United States, have begun waiving some of Liberia’s debt, that is still not enough.

"Work has to be done to conclude arrangements with all of our bilateral creditors for the cancellation of individual bilateral debt and that of our major multilateral creditors," Johnson-Sirleaf said in an address to the nation on Monday.

Liberia has an external debt of $3 billion accumulated by past regimes, but international creditors have made the formulation of a poverty reduction strategy a major requirement for highly indebted poor countries to qualify for debt relief.

Toga McIntosh, Liberia's planning and economic affairs minister, told IRIN on Tuesday that the strategy has already been endorsed by the country's international donors and partners.

"The strategy would run up to June 2008, and by July 2008 a more elaborate national poverty reduction strategy would be in place,” he said.

ak/nr/cs