By: Julius Konton
A growing chorus of commendations is emerging around the leadership of National Port Authority (NPA) Managing Director H. Sekou Dukuly, with former senior officials of the port institution praising his administration for what they describe as significant steps toward institutional reform, infrastructure development and improved employee welfare.
The latest commendation has come from former NPA Managing Director Cecelia Cuffy Brown, who has applauded the decision by Dukuly and his management team to regularize the employment status of contractors and transition eligible workers into permanent positions.
Brown described the initiative as a significant intervention in the lives of workers and their families, arguing that permanent employment provides workers with greater access to employment benefits, long-term security and retirement-related protections that may not be available to casual workers and contractors.
“Your decision to regularize the statuses of employees has brought joy into homes,” Brown said.
She noted that many of the affected workers are breadwinners, parents and heads of households, meaning that improvements in their employment conditions could have an impact far beyond the individual employee.
“When we enhance the quality of life for one person, we have also done the same for others who are attached to them,” she emphasized.
Brown also used the occasion to stress the importance of continuity in public-sector leadership, urging officials appointed to senior positions to build upon the accomplishments of their predecessors while introducing improvements of their own.
According to her, public institutions benefit when successive administrations recognize that governance is a continuing process rather than a series of isolated leadership tenures.
She further argued that institutions that prioritize the welfare of their employees ultimately contribute to national development.
“A corporation within a government that takes care of its workers brings blessings to the government because happy people pray for the government to succeed,” Brown said.
Expressing appreciation for Dukuly’s initiative, she concluded: “My heartfelt gratitude to you. Please take your flowers on this one.”
Responding to the former NPA boss, Managing Director Sekou Dukuly said Brown’s remarks had touched him deeply, adding that he accepted the commendation with humility and gratitude.
“Let me be clear that whatever good has come from this decision belongs first to God, and then to the very men and women who rise each day to labor for the growth of our nation,” Dukuly said.
He characterized the regularization initiative as part of a broader effort to restore dignity and security to workers who, despite performing critical duties, had remained on the margins of the institution in terms of employment status.
“For far too long, those who carried the heaviest burdens stood at the margins of the same institution they helped to build,” he said.
Dukuly maintained that providing workers with more secure employment should not be viewed as a favor but as an institutional responsibility.
“Our effort to restore their dignity, to secure their future, and to affirm their worth was never a favor. Rather, it was a debt long owed to them by all those who are privileged to serve,” he stated.
The NPA Managing Director framed the policy within a broader philosophy of public service, arguing that leadership should ultimately be measured by its impact on ordinary citizens.
“We serve because we love this country. We serve because we believe leadership is measured not by the comfort it brings to those at the top, but by the quality of life it secures for the ordinary worker, the parent, and the head of the home,” Dukuly said.
He added: “When we, as arrowheads, lift one soul, we lift an entire household. And when we strengthen households, we strengthen the Republic itself.”
Dukuly also credited President Joseph Nyuma Boakai with providing the broader policy direction underpinning his administration’s efforts at the NPA.
He said President Boakai’s vision of a Liberia that works for all its citizens had given his team “spirit and direction” in pursuing institutional reforms.
“Under President Boakai’s leadership, we are reminded that government exists to serve, and that no citizen who labors honestly should ever be forgotten,” Dukuly said.
Addressing NPA employees directly, he added: “Your labor is seen, your dignity is honored, and your future matters to me. Let us continue, together, to build a nation worthy of the sacrifice of our people.”
The latest commendation follows similar praise from former NPA Comptroller J. Franklin Sarkoh, who recently commended Dukuly for the reported regularization of more than 400 contractors into permanent employment.
Sarkoh described the move as a milestone achievement worthy of recognition, adding to a growing narrative surrounding employee welfare under the current NPA administration.
The reported regularization is significant because the NPA is one of Liberia’s strategically important public institutions, overseeing the country’s principal seaports and playing a central role in the movement of imports and exports.
NPA’s Strategic Role in Liberia’s Economy
The National Port Authority was established by an Act of the Liberian Legislature in 1967, with the law amended in 1970, giving the state-owned corporation responsibility for managing, planning and developing Liberia’s public ports.
The NPA currently oversees four major ports: the Freeport of Monrovia, Port of Buchanan, Port of Greenville and Port of Harper.
The Freeport of Monrovia, located on Bushrod Island, is the largest port in the NPA network and serves as a critical gateway for Liberia’s international commerce.
The port’s infrastructure includes a protected harbor covering approximately 300 hectares, enclosed by two rock breakwaters measuring about 2,300 meters and 2,200 meters respectively.
Its main marginal wharf is approximately 600 meters long and can accommodate between three and four vessels, depending on vessel size.
The NPA says its port system handles substantial cargo volumes and has an increasingly important role in facilitating trade, investment and economic activity across Liberia.
The Authority also operates within an international maritime security framework, with the Freeport of Monrovia and Port of Buchanan recognized as International Ship and Port Facility Security (ISPS) Code-compliant, Security Level One ports.
The emerging debate around Dukuly’s leadership therefore extends beyond cranes, vessels, cargo and port infrastructure to the human beings who keep Liberia’s maritime gateway functioning.
For supporters of the regularization initiative, moving eligible workers from insecure contractual arrangements into permanent employment represents an investment in institutional stability, employee morale and household economic security.
It also comes at a time when Liberia continues to grapple with the broader challenge of creating secure and productive employment, particularly in institutions that are central to economic growth.
The NPA itself identifies capital investment, efficiency, safe port operations and reduced trade costs as critical priorities for making Liberia’s ports more competitive within the Mano River Union and wider West African region.
Against that backdrop, Dukuly’s supporters argue that infrastructure modernization and worker empowerment must advance together.
For the NPA Managing Director, however, the ultimate measure of reform is not simply the physical transformation of the ports but the lives of the people who work within them.
“When they are strengthened, their families are strengthened. And when families are strengthened, the Republic is strengthened,” his message suggests, a philosophy that places worker welfare alongside infrastructure and operational efficiency at the heart of the Authority’s transformation agenda.
