Coming out of the Ebola crisis, Liberia’s government are now planning to lay-off, 30,000 of their 50,000 employees. Branden Kelly’s blog helped me understand the problems with downsizing at a business scale, but I can only assume that at a government level a downsizing of this magnitude would cause great unrest in the country.
Branden talks about how downsizing can effect morale and productivity in a company, and if the Liberian government were to lay-off about 60% of the workforce, I can imagine their being a huge fall in the countries morale. Above this unemployment in the country will rise from an already unacceptable level.
Although the Liberian government want to cut costs after the recent Ebola epidemic, I feel it is necessary for the government to realize that firing so many workers may not be the best plan of action. Although it would reduce costs in the short-term, Liberia would risk causing huge distrust against the government, as well as falling productivity as the counties morale plummets. Also in the long-term, having a large unemployment rate won’t help to improve the Liberian economy, as people won’t have any money to spend.
I think Liberia should think of other cost cutting measures, and after the Ebola crisis, a plan to fire so many workers would only cause the country to go into another crisis, this time an economic one.