Thursday, December 15, 2011

Monrovia criminalizes 2/3 of the population

Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, is the latest city to ban street hawking, the German Press Agency reports.

According to the UN's International Labour Organisation (ILO), about 68 per cent of employed Liberians work in the informal sector, including street sales. Indeed, when employment in the informal sector is taken into consideration, Liberia's unemployment rate is as low as 3.7 per cent. 

So that raises the question: why would officials move to criminalize the majority of the working population? Why criminalize the one part of the economy that actually keeps people working and surviving?

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