Probe Sale of Gov’t Vehicles under Mahama – OccupyGhana tells Prez

Pressure group, OccupyGhana has petitioned President Nana Akufo-Addo to begin full-scale investigations into the sale and disposal of government vehicles prior to the change of power in 2017.

According to the group, the vehicles may have been disposed without recourse to the law outlined in the Public Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663).

In a letter addressed to the office of the president and copied to four other principal offices in government― the Vice-President, Speaker of Parliament, Administrator-General at the Castle, Osu and Office of the Special Prosecutor, the group sought to find out the process through which the said vehicles had been sold.

OccupyGhana in the letter stated that it had in March, 2017 written to the Chief of Staff and the Administrator-General demanding same but did not receive a response.

However, upon a follow-up on January 30, 2018, the group said, “we received a response from the Administrator-General on February 7, 2018…providing us with a schedule of vehicles sold, who they were sold to and how much they were sold for,” but did not get information on whether mandatory procedure was followed.

“We have cause to suspect that the non-responsiveness is because the procedures were breached,” the letter indicated.

According to Kwaku D. Segbefia, signatory to the letter, vehicles belonging to the government have been sold cheaply to political office holders, without regard to the procedure laid down by law for the disposal of government assets.

Prior to 2016, the claim was that “vehicles” were not specifically covered under the mandatory procedure under sections 83 and 84 of Act 663.

But to address the seeming lacuna in the law, section 83 of the Act 663 was amended so that the mandatory disposal procedure would without doubt apply to vehicles.

Nonetheless, the letter indicates that months after the amendment, government vehicles were still being disposed without regard for the law.

“We do not believe that persons working for the government would dispose of, and others would acquire, vehicles under circumstances that would make them liable to prosecution under section 92(1) of Act 663,” Mr. Segbefia stated.

After the investigations, OccupyGhana demands that findings be made public.

By: Grace Ablewor Sogbey/ [email protected]