Liberia

The Liberia Labor Congress held a joint workshop with ILO ACTRAV and the ILO Abuja office on decent work for persons with disabilities in December 2018. Since the end of the civil war in 2003, the nation has made significant progress towards decent work for all, but still has progress to make on eliminating social, economic and cultural injustice for persons with disability.

Many trained and qualified nurses in Liberia, most of whom are members of PSI affiliate NAHWUL, are on a continuous struggle to get their names on the nation’s payroll system, while others, whose names have been wrongly erased from the system, race against time to resolve the “ghost” status tagged to their names in the system.

Nurse Martha Morris, 35, worked in a public hospital in her hometown when the Ebola virus raged through Liberia. She gave up a lot to fight for better working conditions for health workers. It's a cause she thinks is worth continuing to fight for.

In a discussion with PSI, George Poe Williams, General Secretary of NAHWUL, Liberia, expressed his heartfelt frustration at the situation in the country, but also his hope for the future with the new government of President George Weah who recently met with the health sector unions, as earlier reported by PSI. Here are some extracts from the discussion.

The PSI Ebola Response Strategy, focusing on argumentation, networking and lobby work, is almost coming to an end, and the participating unions are still as active as ever. In Liberia, where the PSI affiliates set up a wide collaboration between trade unions and civil society organisations, the Project Management Committee (PMC) with representatives of NAHWAL, NTUPAW, CTIL, CSA and HRM organised two workshops to boost the expertise and means of action of the broad network.

Unions and civil society organisations have warned about the devastating effects of the privatisation of education on both students and teachers during the launch of a new study on Liberia’s PSL project.

An unexpected epidemic in Liberia has highlighted the gaps that remain in the country’s capacity to react quickly and effectively. Health workers are demanding access to medical and laboratory equipment to avoid delays in diagnosis.

At the end of the Ebola crisis in the Mano River Basin, the Liberian government declared its commitment to building a resilient health care delivery system. However, the Liberian government left the same management in place and, unsurprisingly, working conditions for health workers have not improved.