Monrovia, Liberia, Dec. 5: Flanked by journalists from the local media, Chinese Ambassador ZHOU Yuxiao expressed his government’s willingness in bringing positive changes into this postwar country, while he along with the Ministers of Health, Dr. Walter Gwanegale, Public Works, Samuel Kofi Woods, and Information Cletus Sieh on last Friday took a brief tour of the China-aid former Health Ministry Building ahead of the project’s massive refurbishing.

“As long as we feel we can help Liberia to develop, we will do it.” He then called for the total support and cooperation of Liberians, especially those in the vicinity of the work, to ensure that the project is completed on time.

 

The tour comes after the Chinese Government has finally agreed to do “total and complete” renovation of the Ministry of Health facilities in Congo Town and initial works have already began. This coming dry season will see the full scale of the renovation work to be done and the whole project is to be completed in at most 10 months. Once completed, it will provide a roomy facility to host the country’s health ministry which is currently in fragments.

 

Liberian Public Works Minister Woods said that the completion of the new health Ministry building is one of the main goals of the Liberian Government during this dry season and Chinese engineers are working along with the Ministry of Public Works to ensure the project is done. The Health Minister Dr. Gwanegale lauded China for its continuing assistance to Liberia’s redevelopment and enumerated some of its earlier projects here. “You know that they (Chinese) have built for us Fendell Campus (for education), they have built Tapota hospital and this was a building that they built before the war. We are here today to see the quality of work that will be done here.” Information Minister Sieh attributed the level of assistance from China, coming to Liberia to what he called the explicit confidence the international community has in President Sirleaf.

Fity-six Liberian contractors and six Chinese engineers are currently during the preparatory work on the building (clearing and cleaning up), and Ambassador ZHOU also said the Chinese firm contracted to do the job has been told include as many Liberian as possible during the project implementation.