Even though the Justice in Chambers at the Supreme Court, Judge Yusif D. Kaba, intervened by citing a conference between the Kwenyan & Associates and the Liberia Civil Aviation Authority’s Director General, Moses Y. Kollie, it appears like the LCAA and its Director General are bent on defying the court’s order and denying the entry into the country of the helicopter, BELL 430 ZT RJA, owned by the Chief Executive Officer of the company, Dr. Daniel E. Cassell.
Dr. Cassell, also the Standard Bearer of the opposition People’s Liberation Party (PLP), some time last year decided to bring into the country a helicopter, intended to help him and his company to distribute drugs in leeward counties; however, his request to the LCAA was denied on ground that the authority was carrying out due diligence before granting the helicopter a landing permit.
On September 29, 2021, Cusmos Construction Corporation wrote the Director of the LCAA informing him about the construction of a hangar for the purpose of housing BELL 430 in Margibi County, based on the minimum specifications as directed by the Bell manufacturer as regards the size of the helicopter and the technical advice provided by the duly approved maintenance engineering entity, NAC of South Africa, which has been appointed as Aircraft Maintenance Operator (AMO) for ZT-RJA.
In order to prove that the aircraft is in good form and meets the standard of an acceptable aircraft in and outside Liberia, the Kwenyan & Associates requested the helicopter’s clearance form from the International Flight Clearances Pty. Ltd. The clearance revealed that between South Africa, where the aircraft picked up from, to Ghana, where the aircraft is currently stationed, it passed through Cameroon, Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Namibia, Angola, DR Congo, Gabon, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast and Ghana, without any hindrance to landing or overflight.
Also, the Certificate of Registration for the aircraft was also among documents provided the LCAA. The registration certificate, which was authorized by the South African Civil Aviation Authority, noted, “It is hereby certified that the aircraft described above has been duly entered on the South African Civil Aircraft Register in accordance with the Convention on International Civil Aviation dated 7 December 1944 and with the Civil Aviation Regulations, 2011, as amended.”
After giving the LCAA the necessary time and space to do its statutory work but without any information as to whether the LCAA has denied or granted the helicopter the permission to land, a member of the Board of Kwenyan and Associates, Tapple E. Doe, took the matter to court, in an effort to seek an amicable redress.
The Justice in Chamber then cited the two parties to a conference on October 20, 2021 and ordered the LCAA to permit the aircraft to land in Liberia, pending the outcome of the conference.
The LCAA Director General, who was fined by the court on the day the conference was held, contradictorily told the court that he neither received any application for permit from Kwenyan & Associate nor did he grant any permission to the helicopter, but that he was again reviewing the permit which he claimed he did not receive.
On Monday, November 1, 2021 beneficiaries of Dr. Cassell’s humanitarianism as well as partisans, sympathizers and well-wishers of the PLP assembled in front of the United States embassy, under the banner, “Liberians in Solidarity with Dr. Cassell (LSDC)”, to petition the US government to intervene in the embarrassment being caused by the Weah administration only because Dr. Cassell is allegedly a member of the opposition.
However, all the effort exerted by all the parties to see that the aircraft land in Liberia proved futile, which is causing skeptics to speculate whether the denial is more political than objective.
One is left to wonder why the LCAA has refused to conclude its “due diligence” activities since five months ago, and why it has even refused to grant the aircraft a temporary landing, as ordered by the Supreme Court, pending its “due diligence” activities.
According to information, the aircraft is stuck in Ghana, with a financial burden of US$200 per day on the Kwenyan & Associates. This signals what may be termed political intimidation by the Weah government, which could allegedly be meant to subdue Dr. Cassell into succumbing to some request by the administration or giving in on his political ambition, which seems far from happening.
The Hot Pepper is informed that the main purpose of the helicopter was to help the Kwenyan & Associates reach out to residents in leeward counties in distributing free medical drugs for their wellbeing. The drugs are already in country, but impossible to be distributed due to the lack of safe transportation to take them to the various destinations.
Whatever the case is between the government and Dr. Cassell, it is a fact that the citizens of the country are being denied medical supplies that could go a long way in improving their health, especially those who cannot afford the bills of the hospitals.