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| Kpaan is no more keeping silent |
Former Montserrado County superintendent Grace Kpaan over the weekend blew the top off the roof with an ‘I nah keeping my mouth shut’ exposé that is sure to have a number of Legislators squirming in their seats over the former superintendent’s revelations in the unfolding sage that has her and her former co-workers at each other’s throat.
Ms. Kpaan and her former colleagues from the Montserrado County Legislative Caucus fell out over some unexpended (left over) monies in a narrative that has taken an unexpected and revealing twist ever since the House decided that Kpaan was getting out of hand and needed to be rehabilitated (brought in to correct her thinking…and by extension, her behavior).
In a radio interview last Thursday, Kpaan revealed that monies were withdrawn from the county’s coffers by legislators on their own accord. She was sidelined, the budget law abused, and the normal procedure by-passed by the county’s lawmakers, she said. The former superintendent kept going back to Representative Thomas P. Fallah, whom she claimed received on one occasion in November, US$20,000 in the name of scholarships for a school run by him.
By-Passing The Normal Procedure
As the superintendent of the county “I had absolutely no idea that the project management committee chairman had already sent out the scholarship checks for encashment by the banks. Normally, I write the Minister giving reasons why the checks before me should be processed. The Minister then writes the banks to say that the checks had been cleared for encashment. The banks would then disburse the monies.”
She continued: “But the entire process had been by-passed; when the vouchers were sent back to me, some of the checks already had been cashed, including those written out to Thomas P. Fallah Vocational School and Jimmy Jolocon (sic) High School. The amount of checks that were returned to me amounted to fifty. I canceled the voucher for the US$20,000. But to my dismay, I saw in the newspapers another check; which means Thomas P. Fallah had another check in his hands for Montserrado County. I was so afraid: that account might run low if people had checks just all around the town. They had issued almost 30 to 40 checks without my knowledge.”
“The interesting thing about the scholarship listings that were sent was that they had been sent by the representatives themselves---not by the leadership of the communities. And according to the law, this thing should be taken from down at the community level up to the top. But every lawmaker had his own letter written with his own list, saying: ‘my personal scholarship, my personal initiative.’ Like Thomas P. Fallah, who wrote his own letter for his own school, asking for scholarships to be paid for 100 students, and another 300 names for District #2. He wanted all going to Thomas P. Fallah Vocational School that doesn’t even exist,” she said.
Kpaan continued her narration: “The other man wrote for US$16,000 when he knew very well that his district was only entitled to US$15,000. They were mainly concerned with students they claimed were on their listings: largely ghost students! You have District #7 paying for scholarships for academic year 2011/2012 that had already passed and been completed.
“And they were saying I should bow to that. I should accept it and play (sic) as it is. So, because I refused, they put up a hearing initiated by Edward Forh. This is what brought about the problem. This superintendent wanted to cross-check and she was brought to the Capitol and mandated to go and process the scholarships ‘as is,’”
Continuing, former Superintendent Kpaan argued that “by right, you are not supposed to work with only a check. You also supposed to have a letter accompanying the check. I am supposed to write the Minister of Internal Affairs to say process XYZ and the Minister will, in turn, write the bank for disbursement. There should be a letter from the Minister to the bank to say ‘this check is cleared, so you can process it.’ But there was no such letter for clearance for that Thomas P. Fallah check and it was indeed processed.”
“The US$20,000 was withdrawn from the County’s account and in that account, we have social development funds from Firestone, NOCAL, plus the County Development Funds. There were two US$20,000 checks in the hands of Thomas P. Fallah – one for Thomas Fallah Vocational School [which was cancelled by me], and the one that was cleared through the bank had on it: Thomas P. Fallah, period and nothing else added to it. So, how he got that money is a question that every Liberian must ask him and he needs to answer,” she added.
'My School Exist'
Rep. Fallah yesterday informed the Daily Observer that his school that was referenced by Kpaan is rather under construction and is located in New Zoe, Somalia Drive. He called it the ‘future’ Thomas Fallah Vocational School.
“We used part of our district’s money, which is US$5,000, for the scholarships,” Mr. Thomas Fallah told this newspaper yesterday when consulted.
“At my school, each student is required to pay US$50 as tuition. But because the school is for me, what we did was to send the names of 150 persons to the superintendent for scholarship payments, instead of 100. I had about 50 to 75 students [added] for my personal own initiative,” he said.
This meant that instead of 100 names for US$5000 at the rate of US$50 per student, Rep. Fallahs’ added 50 names amounting to an extra US$2,500, more than the approved US$5,000 for his district.
The lawmaker argued that besides the “future” Thomas P. Fallah Vocational School [currently under construction], he also runs a computer school from his district’s office at Red-Light. That school, he said, was established in 2007 and is operational. He pointed out that the school now has close to 200 students.
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