Eleven state-owned Mitsubishi Pajero cross-country vehicles bought in 1996 at an estimated value of over ?2 billion for the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development under the previous Rawlings regime cannot be traced says The Ghanaian Chronicle.
The cars cannot be traced among the pool of vehicles at the ministry; neither can they be traced at agencies where they were sent to.
Both the ministry and the Auditor-General’s Department, which has been conducting a special audit investigation into the location of the cars, cannot trace them. All the vehicles were bought brand-new.
The missing vehicles were part of 124 vehicles purchased by the Rawlings-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) government in 1996 for distribution to government agencies.
The vehicles include pickups and other brands of cars-56 Nissans, 28 Toyota pickups and 28 Mitsubishi. Twelve other Mitsubishi Pajeros were later added to the fleet.
Credible reports, which the Chronicle says it has received indicate that some of the other brands of vehicles are also missing.
In a letter to the Chief Director of the Ministry of Local Government dated June 27, Mr. R.K. Agyeman of the Auditor-General's Department stated that, “in spite of our numerous visit to the Ministry, no one is able to indicate the location of the above mentioned vehicles”.
The paper says it can reveal that the search for the vehicles may be a wild goose chase as the cars are believed to have been re-registered with fake documents. Sources at the Driver and vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA), in Accra, say the registration documents of many of the missing cars would be extremely difficult to trace without registration numbers.
