Paynesville – Montserrado County District #10 Representative Yekeh Kolubah on Tuesday, May 24, 2022, appeared as a guest on the OK Morning Rush, a popular talk show on OK FM 99.5MHZ in Monrovia.
Fact Check Report By: Jerry Gaye | LVL Fact Checker
While stressing the need to audit the House of Representatives during the live interview, Representative Kolubah claimed that the government of Liberia allocated US$2,300,000 in the 2022 National Budget for the office of the Speaker Bhofal Chambers. He also claimed that US$200,000 was placed in the Budget for the purchase a vehicle for the Speaker.
Said Representative Kolubah: “Most often I call for the House to be audited. Has the House been audited? The manner in which we are carrying ourselves; the House needs to be audited. When the House is audited, then the Liberia people will know how much money they gave to Yekeh for District #10 and he ate the money”.
He continued: “When Honorable Bhofal Chambers was not speaker at the time, he called for the House to be audited. But our Speaker’s Budget is $2,300,000 (two million three-hundred thousand). They put two hundred thousand in the Budget for our speaker car. Look, the House needs to be audited”.
Local Voices Liberia Fact Checking desk carefully reviewed the current 2022 National Budget and found out that US$2,300,000 was not allocated for the office of the Speaker. In the 2022 National Budget, the allocation made to the office is US$2,094,425.
We also checked the 2022 budget but did not find a US$200,000 allocation for the purchase of a vehicle for the Speaker. A review of Page 8 of the instrument shows US$45,000 allotment for ‘Transport Equipment-Vehicles’ for the Speaker’s office. On the same page, another allotment of US$60,610 was allocated as ‘Fuel and Lubricant’ cost for the Speaker’s vehicles.
Conclusion
Based on our research, we conclude that the claim made by Representative Kolubah that the Budgetary allocation for the office of the Speaker is US$2,300,000 is incorrect. The allotment made to the Speaker’s office in the 2022 National Budget is US$2,094,425.
After a careful review of the instrument, we also found out that there is no allotment of US$200,000 to the Speaker’s office for the purchase of vehicles as claimed by the Montserrado County lawmaker. The two allotments relating to vehicles in the Speaker’s Office Budget include US$45,000 for ‘Transport Equipment’ and US$60,610 for ‘Fuel and Lubricant’.
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