The Inquirer
Monrovia, Liberia

Distributed by

The Perspective
Atlanta, Georgia

Posted June 19, 2004

The Finance Ministry has begun the disbursement of salary checks for civil servants throughout the country. A Finance Ministry release said the payment covers all government ministries and agencies for the months of May and June respectively.

The Ministry is therefore appealing to expediters of government ministries and agencies whose payrolls are yet to be delivered to the Bureau of General Accounting (BGA) at the Finance Ministry to cooperate so as to speed up process of salary disbursement.

The release indicated that the Ministry has begun working extra hours since last week in preparation for the processing of GOL payrolls for the month of July in order to make the 26 Celebration a success.

In another development, the Finance Ministry has dismissed as incorrect and misleading, the headline of the Thursday edition of the Diary Newspaper to the effect of an alleged extortion involving Minister Kamara as nothing less than a manufactured political piece orchestrated by the paper and its source intended to mislead the public and injure the reputation of the Finance boss.

The Ministry intimated that the diabolical insinuation of the paper and its source is sad and unfortunate against the backdrop that the administrative structure of the Finance Ministry alone does not allow the Minister of Finance to get involved with taxes at the level of US$50,000.

The Ministry said it was taken aback that the paper did not make reference to any substantive payment document indicating transaction between Firestone and the Ministry but elected to publish a proxy political story boarded on vendetta and witch-hunt