Kigali: The controversial mayor of the Liberian capital has launched an ambitious campaign that should see Monrovia’s poor forced out of the city to give it different look like that of Kigali, reports indicate.

Ms. Mary Broh, Monrovia’s mayor-designate, is sweeping through neighbourhoods with her task force, vigorously tearing down residential structures along roads. Her critics are bitter.

Ms. Broh believes that cleaning up the city is a major step in Liberia’s emergence from conflict. "The war is over maybe three, four years now, and people have to realise now that this is not the only post-war nation," she says, as quoted by Inter Press Service (IPS).  

"Rwanda was able to do it - Kigali is one of the cleanest cities in Africa. And they lost a million people. Look at Sierra Leone. All these countries, they are recuperating."

And she is contemptuous of the Liberians who crowd Monrovia’s slums accusing them of being “too lazy”.

"Because they are just too lazy. Nobody wants to go back to the soil. Laziness is the root of this whole thing. People don’t have work ethics. It’s dependence syndrome, that’s what it is. They beg - we have a lot of beggars - because they want to sit under the shaded tree all day and do nothing."

After Ms. Broh’s previous stints combating corruption at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Port Authority, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf nominated her mayor in February 2009. At the same time, she was appointed to take the lead on the Special Presidential Task Force to clean up Monrovia. Broh is direct in asserting her priority: "We will try to depopulate - people must go back to their county."

 

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