Gov’t rubbishes Tarpeh’s claims

The Government of Liberia has rubbished claims by the Vice President of Fiscal Affairs and Finance at the state-owned university of Liberia or UL that funding to the university was being with-held because of him as untrue and cheap.

Acting Information Minister Isaac W. Jackson told a regular MICAT’s press briefing on Capitol Hill Monday that the government had no plan to witch-hunt any of its citizens in the country as portrayed by Professor Tarpeh.

“For a man who calls himself a professor to lie on the President failing to support the university all because of his alignment with a particular political party is misleading and false,” Minister Jackson said, noting: “It beats my imagination that because of his alignment with a particular political party that the president will not want to support the university; the professor must not put the university and students at risk with his lying context.” He indicated that if someone will want to hunt Mr. Tarpeh, that will not come from this government, because it was not its intention to hunt people whenever they resign.

He said it was his right, saying it was not strange because they all came from the same opposition block.

According to the Acting Information Minister, professor Tarpeh’s decision to quit the University of Liberia and make negative statement against the president is because of his affiliation with the Congress for Democratic Change or CDC, was unfair and lazy, urging him to desist.

The UL Vice President for Fiscal Affairs and Finance, Associate Professor Wilson Tarpeh, is reported to have submitted his letter of resignation on March 9,2015 to the President of the University, Dr. Emmet Dennis, citing the inability of government to provide the university with the much needed funding for the reopening of the university because of his affiliation with the CDC.

Said Prof. Tarpeh: “Please accept this letter as my resignation as Vice President for Fiscal Affairs & Finance, effective March 9, 2015. My decision to quit is triggered by the government’s unwillingness to release much needed funding to the Business & the Finance Office (BFO) to enable the university to begin preparing for the reopening of the academic school year, despite providing all the required accountability reports”.

He further explained that his decision to join the Congress for Democratic Change or CDC by campaigning for its political Leader George Weah was based on the dispelling belief that partisan of the CDC were violent people, saying Senator Weah was still popular and to also prove that young Liberian can do with little support.

 “It is my understanding from authoritative sources that the withholding of the funds is because of my association with an opposition political party,” Tarpeh noted in his letter of resignation.

By Lewis S. Teh