Ex-combatant situation - an "emergency issue"

The situation of Liberia's former combatants will be addressed as an "emergency issue" at a meeting of UN agency heads in Monrovia on 4 August, Felix Downes-Thomas, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, told IRIN on Friday. Some 150-200 veterans, including some disabled during the civil war, demonstrated "energetically" outside the UN Peace Building office in Monrovia on Tuesday, demanding resettlement benefits from the international community, Downes-Thomas said. They spoke of their feelings of neglect and accused the United Nations and the rest of the international community of not keeping a promise to help them reintegrate into society - including by providing skills training - after they handed over their weapons to the ECOWAS Peace Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) at the end of the civil war. "We champion your cause but there have been financial constraints," Downes-Thomas told Eric Meyers, spokesman of the Veterans Association of Liberia, at a meeting on Thursday. He told him UN agency heads would meet next week to deal with their situation. See separate item titled 'Ex-combatant situation - an "emergency issue"' Civil servants salaries to be increased Salaries for Liberia's civil servants, who number about 40,000, are to be quadrupled, Finance Minister John Bestman told IRIN on Friday. "The minimum gross salary will be 850 Liberian dollars (US $21) and the ceiling will be 2,500 Liberian dollars," Bestman said. "The government wants to increase people's disposable income to serve as an economic stimulus." The current gross minimum salary for civil servants is 200 Liberian dollars. The increase was already programmed in the budget and will be financed out of improved tax collection and streamlining other expenditures such as foreign travel. Payment to civil servants will be retroactive to 1 July, Bestman added.