ILO Launches Recovery Activities in Liberia

The ILO recently launched its first activities to help Liberia consolidate its long-awaited peace and capitalize on the momentum generated by Africa’s first elected female head of state, Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. Employment creation is seen as the most important building block for social progress, economic growth and human security. The aim of ILO’s initial activities is to provide jobs to youth while improving quality of life and setting the stage for long-term development.

The project engages youth to sweep streets, clear garbage, and maintain grass and hedges in several areas of Monrovia. Working in two shifts per day, 120 youth are involved in the first phase, with two more phases planned, for a total of 360 jobs generated. The youth work in groups of four or five under the supervision of ten supervisors from the Monrovia City Corporation (MCC) and some officers of the Liberian Ministry of Labour (MoL). Besides providing much-needed income to youth who might otherwise sit idle, this effort builds the capacity of MCC and MoL officials and demonstrates the ILO’s commitment to Liberia’s development.

The ILO is also now conducting an emergency road maintenance project in Grand Kru in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Works. Other activities are in the pipeline, and the ILO is in the process of establishing an office in Monrovia to oversee its Liberia programme.

During Liberia’s 14-year conflict, the ILO provided some technical assistance in a few areas of its expertise. These included vocational and skills training, entrepreneurship development and support, labour market assessments, support for the return process of internally displaced persons, and Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration.

The ILO recognizes the importance of combining both short- and medium-term actions and of policy support and direct action. With this in mind, the ILO first provided technical assistance to the Government of Liberia in a quick and intense process of formulating an employment strategy for decent work, also known as the Liberia Employment Emergency Programme and the Liberia Employment Action Programme (LEEP/LEAP). A workshop was held in Monrovia on 29 June that enabled the different stakeholders to meet, make contributions and agree on the national employment strategy. On 15 July in Monrovia, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf officially launched the LEEP/LEAP. Three meetings of the Inter-Ministerial Steering Committee for the implementation of the LEEP have been held and a unit to support its work has been established under the Ministry of Labour.

The ILO immediately started to prepare for an immediate action programme that focuses on job creation. It will have three main components:

• The reconstruction of the Bentol road through labour based methodologies, including capacity building of the Ministry of Public Works and some private contractors. The project will also integrate immediate skill training and entrepreneurship development in the project locations to pilot local economic recovery approaches;
• A waste management project for Monrovia, described above;
• Support to the Ministry of Labour in its immediate capacity as lead facilitator for the LEEP/LEAP, and to strengthen its capacity to undertake key initiative 5 of the ILO Programme of action involving “humanization” of Liberia’s labour force and efforts to combat child labour and trafficking;

The programme will be funded by the Government of the Netherlands and will last 24 months.