Monrovia: The ambassador of the United States to Liberia charged that lawmakers were "buttering their own bread" and "feathering their own nests" while underfunding clinics and other public services, leaving rural residents "destitute."

According to Michael McCarthy, he recently travelled to a number of rural counties and "was startled and deeply troubled to encounter multiple county hospitals that received not one penny of what they were promised in the 2022 budget.

In a statement that was received late on Monday, he claimed that about $100,000 was intended to be given to hospitals.

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The US has pledged to invest more than $40 million in the construction of a lab in Liberia, which will cost the country's government $3–4 million per year to run.

McCarthy, whose nation is a longtime ally of Liberia, said, "The blocking of resources is so complete that it must be institutional: and the lack of any alarm being raised indicates a syndicate involving players at the legislature, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs."

Additionally, he claimed that none of the rural service centres he visited had received any of the $13,000 in budget funding they were supposed to receive for 2022.

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According to him, one of these centres hasn't printed marriage certificates in four years because the printer broke. It last received its allocation five years ago.

"It was striking that the further I went from Monrovia, the more elaborate and explicit were the reasons given for the lack of funding from the central government," the ambassador, whose replacement was nominated in March, said.

The 73 representatives and 30 senators of (Liberia) "spent $65 million feathering their own nests while hospitals went without supplies and service centres withered on the vine."

He also criticised senators, ministers, and representatives for receiving annual duty-free imports and paying lower taxes than the general public.

"Those citizens are treated with a neglect that borders on contempt," McCarthy said, "should the US Congress ask how the elite in Monrovia are treating destitute citizens in the leeward counties."

Graft is pervasive in Liberia, which is ranked 142nd out of 180 countries in Transparency International's 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index.
Several hundred Liberians peacefully protested government incompetence and President George Weah's alleged disregard for the plight of common Liberians in December at the call of the opposition. On October 10, Weah will run for re-election as president.

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Fighting corruption was one of his key election campaign pledges, but sanctions were placed on three of his close allies last year after the US accused them of corruption.

Weah accepted their resignations in September. Former US slaves established Liberia as a colony in 1822, and it became Africa's first republic 25 years later.
It is still healing from two civil wars that each claimed 250,000 lives.