President Boakai Holds Fourth Cabinet Meeting in 2026.

Good afternoon. Let me welcome all of you. Cabinet ministers and the members of our institutions that are here by invitation, I want to welcome you also. We now call this cabinet meeting to order. As you see the agenda, the focus today is on public works. I think dealing with these entities one by one or in such way, we give better opportunities to be able to go in there for them. And so we will now ask our chaplain to lead us in the word of prayer.

Thank you, Madam Dean. We want to welcome you from your Pasaka Jamba festival in Cape Mount. I understand the turnout was very encouraging. The VP went there. I think these kind of activities are important because they do make people know that we do have a country and people in different communities have reason to call people together. We want to welcome all of you, including some of you who had gone to other places. Today is the day for the Ministry of Public Works. They're going to talk to us mostly about some of the things they do, but including the conference that was held in Ganta on post-conflict infrastructure. I always would like to thank all of you for the work you do, the services you render. It's not all the time that people know or care to know what you do. What they want to see is the result. I must say that some of you have been doing well. We want to encourage you to continue to serve our people.

We do monitor some of the activities that you do, but also including some of the things that are happening globally, especially in the Middle East, and the bearing they have on what we do, our economy. You will also note that the government made some intervention, early intervention, when the prices of petroleum products started going up. We made some timely intervention so as to be able to diminish the hardship on our people by getting products secured early enough. It may not be enough for very long time, depending, but we hope that it has been helping compared to maybe our neighbors, that the prices here have been reasonable. I want to thank the APRC for bringing it to our early attention and the finance ministry for making the resources available.

The Minister of Finance and the Department of Planning has come up with some regulations with respect to the tourism industry, some fee categories. While we welcome the intervention, I think it would have been a little better to have said that this is a new entity that we all look at the figures and what kind of impact they're going to have on the people. So, we understand that these have already been signed, but I will kindly ask that we hold on to that until we can do a little consultation so that we see how realistic these figures are. I know the social media has already got it, but we have to do the work we have to do, and we all have to work together to make sure that we can all justify the figures.

The post-conflict realities are there. Sometimes we wonder why our city is so long in a country where you have had war. Take a city like Monrovia where you had a population of about 350,000 and all of a sudden it went up to about 1.5 million, maybe more. We had not taken time to adjust. When the population of the city or anywhere increases, the social needs also increase. Water consumption will increase, electricity. People come in, they're in a hurry to get space. They don't want to pay rent, they want to build. You find people building in the alleys and fly without regulation. All of these impact the economy. The government's responsibility is to make sure that we cater to the people. No doubt that we see people building everywhere. The demands have increased, which is why the financial corporation had to get a bigger pipe and some of the installations are worn out and need to be replaced. All of these impact on the increased number of people. If we see delays in some things and people say, 'Oh, we don't have this' or 'we don't have that,' you have to understand that there was a need to always see what the increased number of people in the capital brings about, like schools, more hospitals. The zoning system needs to be put in place. We've been facing those kind of challenges.

Today's agenda is going to deal with some of these issues: the rapid rise in unregulated construction and the impact on zoning laws. When I was building my house way back, public works had regulation—I think they still do—that you submit your plan. They look at your plan, and when approved, you construct. They even gave you five years grace period for tax. Today people are building everywhere without even going to public works. The laws have not changed, but sometimes you don't want to be caught in a situation where they remind you after you have done it. We have to be able to live according to laws. When we go to other countries, we see things working well because the people follow the rules. Here we don't care. We do anything and then later on we complain that people don't understand. We have to begin to look at a lot of things we are supposed to do right if we want to be able to live in communities or to gather those things that we need.

The key challenges include congestion, zoning violations, alley construction, and sometimes bring about flood. Then we hold the government responsible for not intervening. These problems have a lot of impact on society. The people who listen to the radio or on social media take them and run with them. We all go through that, the ministers and people who are doing their best. But as I always say, if you have to move a long distance and you have a lot of dogs barking at you, and you take the time to throw stones at these dogs, you won't reach. So, we try to do the best we can within the law. In the long run, the people will understand. That shouldn't stop you from doing what is right, knowing also that we have a mixed society where most people are not coming on board quickly. But we have to do what is right.

For example, the major road going to the simple bridge—I'm happy that the people there are understanding that the road is not where you're supposed to be. Those people themselves appreciate the fact that they're going to get a good road going to the bridge. Eventually, they will go in behind the ministerial building, Peace Island, all over there. Probably we had gone there and extended the roads—I haven't been there, but people have been talking about it. Sometimes some of us in politics think that the people should complain, but I think the people know when something right is happening. When they appreciate some of their responses and sense of appreciation, they know that nobody is here to harm people. We are trying to do what is right, and that eventually we all benefit from it.

So, we have to focus on restoring zoning discipline, enforcing building standards, and planning. The need for increased institutional accountability across all agencies. I think when you are on the other side of being investigated, you have to know that you are there serving the people. The way you serve the people, you have a responsibility to them. They have to know what you did and how you did it. Nobody here is hunting anybody. All of us are accountable. At the end of the day, we have to show what we did for our country and how we did it. We want to thank those ministers and people who are implementing, who have the guts to do the work they're supposed to do. The only thing I say, whatever we do, there's a good way of doing it and there's a bad way, but we should do it in a way that shows we are not targeting anybody. We just want to do what is right. Posterity will judge us.

Those ministers in the education area, where you have to remove all the ghost names, especially in the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Internal Affairs—now going to be local government—and the health sector, where the bulk of the people just put names, they put their friends' names trying to accommodate them without regard to whether they are trained or not or whether people are going to work. So, I want to encourage the ministers to do their work. Do it honestly and do it correctly. That's the job that you are employed to do. We want to thank you very much for going about it. Our support is always with people who do the right thing. The people on social media, they don't live here. Some of them don't care what happens here. Some of them may be Liberians, but they're comfortable elsewhere. We want to give comfort to our people. We want to provide our people similar opportunities, children to get good quality education, because when you leave school they don't necessarily care where you had your education as long as you pass the measurement of how people are dealt. You are trained to be everywhere. Doctors are doctors everywhere. We have no apologies when we do things that are right for our people. You might sit over there and not want to come, but we have good hospitals here, too. These days everybody who graduates from high school wants to go elsewhere, but let me tell you, we have had good high schools here, too, good colleges here, and we still have them. If you want to learn, all of us should contribute to that. No matter what you do, everybody can leave here to go elsewhere, but you can afford it and it's not even necessary. So, we are here to put the best here for people. That's what we want to instill.

So, as we go through cabinet meetings and make our presentations to expose what we are doing, do it honestly. We make mistakes; yes, we can correct them. But I just want to say it is because of this cabinet that we've been able to accomplish what we've been accomplishing. We are very appreciative of them. Where we see mistakes, we correct them. So, today we have the Ministry of Public Works and they have the floor. We just want to welcome them to do the presentation. I wasn't going to, but they woke me. International people were invited who made a presentation. I'm sure today they will tell us how it proceeded and the conclusion, and maybe even more of what we'd like to hear. Thank you, Mr. DGM. We now officially open the floor.