“This Minister is a Minister that does not sit in his office; he is a field minister, and we are lucky to have him in the rebuilding process of Liberia,” Kupee stated both in Vahun and Kolahun Districts' of Lofa County when he accompany Woods during his recent weeklong visit in the county.
“This is the first time we have seen a Public Works Minister spending much of his time in the field than in the office,” Kupee noted, hoping others could be as serviceable as the Infrastructure Minister in the rebuilding of Liberia.
The Lofa County Senator participated in the groundbreaking ceremonies of the Voinjama City's streets along with Vice President Joseph Boakai and accompanied the Minister to inspect several other road projects and broke ground for the construction of three other roads in Kolahun District.
Kupee told hundreds of citizens in towns along the Kolahun-Vahun road, being reconstructed under the auspices of the Ministry of Public Works, that Woods was a minister who has passion for the job he does and for serving Liberia.
“He is not like other Ministers who sit in their offices in Monrovia and leave the work with his their deputies. He goes out in the field to monitor the work and if it is not done properly he corrects them,” Kupee told town elders, chiefs, women and youth groupings in Kolahun.
“In this country, we have had Public Works Ministers that were stationed in Monrovia, but we now have one that is a field officer,” the Senate's Committee Chair on Ways, Means and Finance noted. “He goes in the field to see what going on and hear form that people what they need.”
The Senator praised Woods in each of the towns along the road, with jubilant citizens expressing gratitude for the rehabilitation of primary and feeder roads spreading in the county.
Lofa County has for the last several years cried for roads, describing the absence of better roads as a major challenge in producing sufficient food to feed the nation as it did before the war, but Woods said as funding becomes available, these obstacles would be countered gradually.
“We know what Lofa can do; we know what Lofa wants; when we give you road, you are capable of feeding Liberia like you did before the war,” Woods stated on Christmas Eve when he, along with Kupee, broke ground for the rehabilitation of the Massambolahun-Mbaloma road in Kolahun District.
The ground breaking ceremony for the 25 kilometers road took place in the home of Foreign Minister Augustine Kpehe Ngafuan, Fangom—a town connected with Massambolahun along the Kolahun-Vahun road.
The stretch of road on which vehicles had never plied was built with bare hands from the early 1960s and completed in 1982, elders and chiefs said.
It takes at least three hours walk to cover the distance between the two major towns of Lofa's food-producing belt, but people would cover the same distance in less than 30 minutes when it is open to vehicles, Public Works Lofa's Resident Engineer Robert Gibson said.
