IPNEWS – Monrovia – The Bishop of Jubilee Praise and Worship Center Church on the Old Road, Monrovia, Bishop Allen Klayee, has been fired from his post in the government by President George Manneh Weah.
Until Bishop Klayee’s “immediate effect” dismissal, which was announced Tuesday, July 6, on the Executive Mansion’s website, he was Managing Director of the Liberia Airport Authority (LAA).
The Liberia Airport Authority is responsible for the supervision and management of all airports and their facilities in Liberia (international and domestic; with the exception of the Air Traffic Control (ATC), Fire and Rescue, Meteorology and Security (especially baggage and passenger screening) which is the responsibility of the Liberia Civil Aviation Authority in accordance with ICAO standards. The LAA is governed by an appointed board consisting of seven (7) members appointed by the President of the Republic of Liberia.
“Bishop Klayee was relieved of his post early Tuesday, July 6, 2021, for administrative reasons,” the Executive Mansion said.
The Mansion’s release further said the Deputy Managing Director for Operations, Martin Hayes, will act as Managing Director of the LAA pending the appointment of the entity’s new boss.
It’s not really clear what led to the President taking this decision against the “Man of God.”
Talkshow host and fierce critic of the Weah Administration, Henry Pedro Costa, thinks this is the reason why the Bishop was fired.
“Let me give you a gist: Bishop Klayee refused to sign Weah’s crooked deal with a Kuwaiti air cargo management company called Nas. And the company has been putting Weah and McGill under pressure to close the deal after they collected a huge amount of cash in kickback from the company. See below: Nas has already listed Liberia as a client on their website: www.nasaero.com, even though Bishop Klayee refused to sign the deal. So, they fired him for standing up to them. Will publish more documents later! You remember two years ago, we exposed Weah when he forced Wil Bako Freeman to sign a similar cargo handling deal with a Jordanian company. The American embassy stepped in and blocked the deal over security concerns. We now call on the Americans to step in again.”
However, the running of the LAA has been marred with many claims and counterclaims from both the employees and the former MD.
Last May 2021, employees of the airport authority made news headlines that they hadn’t received their salaries for the past six months.
While the James Spriggs Payne Airport’s employees also under the LAA, had also complained that the management owed them seven months’ salaries.
The aggrieved employees had confided in a local daily that the Bishop had threatened them several times with dismissal or suspension should any employee raise the salary issue in any of their LAA meetings.
He was also accused of arbitrarily deducting money from employees’ salaries for social security but said money the employees explained is yet to be paid to NASSCORP by the LAA.
He was further accused in the same May, that he had taken the entity’s bus for employees to his church while employees struggled to go home from work.
Again, in May of 2019, Bishop J. Allen Klayee was forced to react to allegations of corruption, nepotism and divisiveness leveled against him by some contractors and employees.
Those employees, who had accused the Bishop, alleged that he had brought with him to the LAA at least 18 persons from his Jubilee Praise Church, all of whom he employed. They named two of those to be his children — Rashella and Emmanuel Klayee.
