In Summary:
Ambulah Mamay, a panelist on Spoon Talk, claimed that the Office of Former First Lady Clar Weah received half a million United States dollars in the 2019/2020 national budget.
We fact-checked this claim by reviewing the national budget and found it to be mostly correct.
June 27, Ambulah Mamay, a panelist on Spoon FM/TV claimed that the office of former First Lady Clar Weah was allocated half a million dollars in the 2019/2020 national budget.
Mamay made this claim while highlighting how the office of the First Lady has often been used as an avenue for bribery and other questionable practices.
The Claim
Excerpt of Mamay’s statement: “Before we came on this show, the big argument from other people was that Clar Weah did not receive money from the budget, but that’s false; she did receive… The 2019/2020 budget actual on the Ministry of Finance website report shows that she receives half a million dollars.”
Rating Justification
To verify whether the office of former First Lady Clar Weah was allotted half a million dollars in the 2019/2020 national budget, we searched and reviewed the 2019/2020 national budget, which Mammey referenced.
Our search found no allocation to the office of the First Lady in that fiscal year with budget code 1013.
However, we discovered that during the 2017/2018 fiscal year, the government allocated US$500,000 to the office of the former First Lady for humanitarian outreach with a budget code of 1013, and in the 2017/2018 budget, and in the outturn, 384,575 was allocated.
The allotments are all made under the Ministry of State for Presidential Affairs.
Conclusion
Based on these findings, we conclude that the claim made by Mammey that the office of the former First Lady received half a million in the 2019/2020 budget is mostly correct. While he got his facts right about allocation to the office of the former First Lady, he is incorrect about the budget year. The former First Lady’s office was allotted US$500,000 in the 2017/2018 fiscal year.
