This is What Bureaucracy Looks Like

A traffic accident reconstructed on a chalkboard. A diagram of traditional dress pasted askew to the concrete wall. Broken furniture, still arranged to invite a visitor to sit. 

These memory-jarring details, somehow both banal and exotic, are immediately recognizable as quintessential to Liberian official offices. Sandwiched between shots of young French paper pushers and a Siberian secretary sporting a perm are ten alluring portraits from Liberia, part of an extraordinary series of photographs, titled simply Bureaucracy, by photographer Jan Banning. The other countries in the series are Bolivia, China, India, the United States, and Yemen. Banning spent years spanning to globe, photographing hundreds of government officials, and her work was organized into a traveling exhibition and was published as a book in 2008.

The visits were unannounced, [we] kept the employees from tidying up or clearing the office. That way, the photos show what a local citizen would be confronted with when entering.

These head-on shots of Liberian civil servants, from the center of Monrovia to remote districts in River Gee County are familiar in ways heartwarming and hilarious, or even headache-inducing, to outright horrifying. Anyone who has spent any time in Liberia has been in rooms like this, sat in small, hand-made wicker seats, under a roof of rusting zinc or woven mat, painted cement floors or worse, covered in rolls of plastic floor matting. Banning and her partner's interview also recorded the official salaries of each, perhaps the most jarring detail of all. 

Banning's descriptions and photos are reposted below. Everything ©Jan Banning.

 Warford Weadatu Sr. (b. 1963), a former farmer and mail carrier, now is county commissioner (administrator) for Nyenawliken district, River Gee County. He has no budget and is not expecting any money soon from the poverty-stricken authorities in Monrovia. Monthly salary: 1,110 Liberian dollars (US$ 20, euro 19), but he hadn't received any salary for the previous year.
 

Major Adolph Dalaney (b. 1940) works in the Reconstruction Room of the Traffic Police at the Liberia National Police Headquarters in the capital Monrovia. Monthly salary: barely 1,000 Liberian dollars (US$ 18, euro 17). Traffic accident victims at times are willing to pay a little extra if Dalaney"s department quickly draws up a favorable report to present to a judge.


Alfred D. Tartea (b. 1946) is administrative assistant and acting superintendent (highest civil servant) of Careysburg district, Montserrado County. Monthly salary: 750 Liberian dollars (US $ 13, euro 12.50).


Alfred C. Garley (b. 1950), stationed in Zwedru, is deputy revenue agent for Grand Gedeh County. During the Liberian civil war, the tax office was robbed and destroyed. Monthly salary: approximately 1,000 Liberian dollars (US$ 18, euro 17).


Henry D. Snorton (1957) is senior tax collector in Kakata district (22000 people), Margibi County. He is co-ordinator of the district"s 12 tax collectors. They take in real estate tax and tax on trade profits, mostly in cash. "We have absolutely nothing: no decent office furniture, no telephones, no typewriters, not even a motorbike to collect tax in remote areas. Our collectors sometimes walk for a whole day to visit one taxable." Monthly salary: 925 Liberian dollars (US$ 16, euro 15).


J. Modesco Siaker (1959), township commissioner in Crozierville, Careysburg district, Montserrado County. Crozierville had 10,000 people before the war; now 4,000. In 1990, Taylor's rebels entered the village: "I was a clerk then, and they threatened to execute me and some others. They let me go, but killed 2 others." They ransacked houses and public buildings. In 1991, INPLF rebels (Prince Johnson c.s.) and Ecomog peacekeepers stole what was left. Since 1997, Siaker is back in his village. His office and home are in a derilict villa: the town hall was raised to the ground.Siaker cannot do much for his people. He earns 750 Lib. dollar (US$ 13, euro 12.50) a month.


Henry Gray (1940), acting commissioner for Gbaepo district, Kanweaken, River Gee County. During the Civil War, the office was completely looted and destroyed: only one wall remained. Gray has 11 personnel, of whom only 4 are paid. The rest are volunteers. He has no budget and over two years salary owing. Yesterday, he went to the capital Fishtown to collect last two months salary, two times 975 Liberian dollars (2x US$ 17, 2x euro 16). All he got was 600 dollars (US$ 11, euro 10). Gray is father to 34 children (sic), 13 of them depending, and has 18 grandchildren.


Lieutenant Samuel P.S. Kollie (b. 1955) is chief of the Traffic Station of the Liberia National Police in Kakata, Margibi County. He has no police car and no means of communication. When an accident is reported, Kollie at times takes a cab at the expense of the person reporting the accident. Monthly salary: 900 Liberian dollars (US$ 16, euro 15).


Louise N. Smith (b. 1964) keeps files at the Department of Statistics of the Bureau for Immigration and Naturalization (BIN) in Monrovia. Monthly salary: 1,000 Liberian dollars (US$ 18, 17 euro), almost all of which is spent on transportation to and from work. Sometimes she receives nothing for three months, except for support from family in the United States.


Brama F. Nyé (b. 1962) is head of the Revenue Office in Smell-no-Taste, Margibi County. Once a month, he drives in a rented or borrowed car to Monrovia to deliver hundreds of thousands of Liberian and American dollars to the Central Bank of Liberia. Monthly salary: 1,080 Liberian dollars (US$ 19, euro 18).


Duazohn, Margibi Couty as the New Capital?

Many months after President Sirleaf's announcement of that Liberia's capital would be located to the remote hamlet of Zekepa, a town that even most Liberians had never heard of, suddenly the speculation shifted that Liberia's capital would instead move to the exurban fringe of the Monrovia region: to Duazohn (also spelled Duarzohn, Duazon, etc), a rapidly-populating zone straddling the country's main highway, east of Paynesville and Monrovia on the way to Roberts International Airport. As one of the few districts in the capital region in which lots of land can be readily purchased, Duazohn has been booming with residential construction.

The report below describes a very official-sounding meeting, in which a plan for a 4000-acre city was presented with plans and specifics to an audience including several relevant government ministries and agencies. The presentation was given by ECB Jones, a long-time  high-ranking bureaucrat in the Ministry of Lands, Mines and Energy. Although not named as such, this is likely the "New Monrovia" plan which has been in development by ECB Jones and partners for years.

From a May 2012 Public Agenda article, speculating on this latest development: 

In the case of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf when she spoke about relocating the country’s city to Zekepah in Nimba, her five ‘Ws’ and one ‘H’ were truly correct – the who were lawmakers, partners and citizens; where=Zekepah; what=relocating city; when=not defined; why=necessary against climate change and how=not defined. But in any case, the pronouncement was made and hopes were high. Fifteen months later, Nimba lawmaker Tingban suspected the pronouncement was a mere mockery intended to win votes from Nimba. Then two months later,this paper has gathered credible information that instead of Zekepah, Duazon in Margibi seems to be Liberia’s new capital city. Was the lawmaker right that the  President was making mockery of her citizens?

It appears that the Liberian Government is undecided about the exact place or county to relocate the country’s political capital city, which has been a major issue of national debate from regime to regime.  Although the name of Bong County has been in the ears of many, probably due to its central location, latest development coming from government circle suggests otherwise. 
This paper has gathered credible information that plans are already far advanced for Liberia's capital city to be relocated around Duazon in Margibi County, instead Zekepah in Nimba as was pronounced by President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf on Monday, January 24, 2011, when she addressed for the 6th and last time the 52nd National Legislature during her first term.

      But seventeen (17) months after that pronouncement at a special called meeting over the weekend in Duanzon, Mamba Kaba District, eminent citizens of Margibi, including Senior Senator Clarice Jah and Representative Ballah Zayzay among others presented and reviewed an initial blueprint of the planned capital city through a Powerpoint presentation by DU Investment Incorporated.
      According to initial information available, the Liberian government has earmarked 40,000 acres of land for its new capital city; though the weekend presentation elaborated on an initial 25,000 acres.
     During the presentation, the Managing Director of DU Investment, Inc., Mr. E.C.B Jones, showed citizens designs and layout of the proposed city, including roads, train tracks, ministries and agencies of government.
      While government does not intend to build all 40,000 acres with infrastructure, our information says it intends to build and relocate all government ministries and agencies there so as to attract investment and habitation; thereby erasing the hope of relocating the city to Zekepah.
      A train track, according to the presentation, will be built from the Robert's International Airport (RIA) to Juanzon and then to Monrovia. In the same blueprint, present-day Monrovia is referred to as Greater Monrovia when the city is relocated to Duanzon.
      The meeting was attended by representatives from the Ministry of Lands, Mines and Energy, National Housing Authority, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Land Commission.
      This discovery comes at a time when Nimba County District #9 lawmaker Richard Matoneky Tingban has sounded a caveat; fearing and hoping that earlier public pronouncement by President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf to relocate the country's capital to Zekepah in his county was not a mockery only intended to win votes from Nimba.
     Rep. Tingban, an Engineer by profession, said though he did not have reasons to think that the President's promise was a mockery, reminding her about public pronouncements helps nation building and truth telling. 
    The Nimba lawmaker said he and other Liberians would feel very disappointed if the President had only made the pronouncement to win votes from Nimba during the 2011 presidential election. 
     A 2008 LISGIS census report put the county as the second most populated area in Liberia. Now that discovery shows that plans are already far advanced to relocate the country's city to Margibi, much is unpredictable.
      The comment comes fifteen months after a pronouncement by President to the nation that her government had selected Zekepah, at the meeting between Nimba, Bong and Grand Bassa counties, as Liberia's next capital city.