Corruption Still in the Land

Illegal rubber-tapping is giving Liberian nascent democracy a serious nightmare

By ABIOLA ODUTOLA

President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberian President, is one person who may not like the latest development in her country. Corrupt practices have reared its ugly head. Ordinarily, observers believe that corruption in Liberia would have been on decline with the restoration of democratic rule. Indeed, Johnson-Sirleaf appears to have more fight to take up. This time against illegal rubber transaction. Illegal rubber tapping which is raising dust in the oldest independent West African country, is a big task for the president. Firestone Limited, a rubber-producing company, is heavily indicted in an illegal rubber-tapping that is said to be depriving the war-ravaged country the needed hard currency.
The firm, reputed to be the country’s biggest rubber producer, is one of three companies that the Liberian government and the United Nations, UN, have accused of profiting from the illegal rubber-tapping. Firestone is being accused of buying rubber from plantations illegally occupied by ex-combatants of Liberia's long years of internecine civil war.
According to the UN human rights reports, two of the plantations occupied by former combatants used to treat workers as slaves. A UN official described the state of affairs at the Guthrie and Sinoe plantations as "disastrous", saying workers work in "conditions of slavery". However, Firestone, owned by the Bridgestone Corporation, does not run these plantations, but it is accused of buying rubber from them.
Christopher Toe, Liberian agriculture minister, said though earlier reports say that Firestone did not buy materials from the sites, evidence so far proved contrary. "Regrettably, the evidence that we have gathered, especially in the last four to six weeks, is contrary to that assertion that they were not involved”, he explains.
However, Patrick Rodrigo, manager of Firestone, in Liberia, refuted the allegations saying, “Firestone did not buy any rubber from the Guthrie Plantation, but he did not know if the company bought from the Sinoe site”. This is the cause of the problem. There is no system to check the origin of rubber in Liberia.
Rubber has been Liberia's biggest export but after more than a decade of civil war, which ended in 2003, it has been in a terrible state. The industry, which generates over $100 million annually, has brought benefits to Liberians and the rest of the world at large through the provision of essential raw materials that are so vital to modern life.
Natural rubber was introduced into Liberian agriculture in the late 19th Century and soon became the catalyst that propelled the country out of severe economic difficulties. Throughout most of the 20th Century, the rubber sector was the mainstay of the national economy, its largest agricultural export earner and the largest source of formal employment.
The  sector is the country’s largest employer of labour and remains the only one that can absorb thousands of disarmed militias, the returnees and those huge numbers of urban poor forced out of the rural areas by the long-running conflict.
Given the relative high price that natural rubber currently commands on world markets and with the other traditional export earners, the economy may soon be finding its way out of the doldrums the war had plunged it.