Monrovia – Former Maryland County Senator John Ballout has blamed the proliferation of narcotic substances in the country on the continuous reduction to the budget of the Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency (LDEA) in the National Budget.
Claim: “The budget of the LDEA has been cut down for the past three to four successive years” by the CDC Government.
Verdict: Mostly Correct
The Claim
The former Senator claimed on the Wednesday, September 13, 2023 edition of the OK Conversation on Okay F, 99.5 that “the budget of the LDEA has been cut down for the past three to four successive years” by the CDC Government.
He noted that the action by the George Weah administration has made the LDEA incapacitated logistically to fight drugs.
The Evidence
To verify this claim, we reviewed allocations that have been made to the Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency in the country’s National Budget for the past three years.
In the Fiscal Year 2019-2020 Budget, US$1,757,962 was allocated to the LDEA. In the following year for FY2020-2021, allocation to the LDEA reduced to US$426,369.
The FY2021 Special Budget also saw a further reduction of the LDEA budget to US$90,650 and US$406,369 in FY2022.
However, in the 2023 National Budget the allocation shows that the agency budget has been increased to US$1,904,651.
Conclusion
We conclude that the claim made by the former Maryland County Senator that the government cut down the budget of the LDEA in the last three to four years is mostly correct.
The LDEA budgets were cut down from US$1,757,962 in 2019-2020 to US$426,369 in 2020-2021, and US$90,650 in the 2021 Special Budget, and US$406,369 in 2022. But there is an increment to US$1,904,651 in this year’s budget.
This report was developed with the support of Internews through the USAID Media Activity project. The funder has no say in the editorial decision leading to the production of this content.