Joseph Osei-Owusu, First Deputy Speaker of Parliament
First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Joseph Osei-Owusu, has expressed disgust about the report of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
He noted that the report only recommended sanctions against an auctioneer who auctioned 24 vehicles of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in 2013 at ridiculous prices to the staff of the ministry and left out officials who superintended over such ‘ridiculous’ auction.
The report was presented to the house a couple of days ago by the chairman of the committee, James Klutse Avedzi, for consideration and adoption by the plenary. But the recommendation by PAC was that Alex Adjei – who auctioned the vehicles without following the proper procedures and eventually pocketed GH¢33,203 as his commission – be suspended by the Ghana Auctioneers’ Registration Board and his licence taken away from him.
Mr. Joseph Osei-Owusu did not understand why sanctions were not recommended against all officials of the ministry who were directly or indirectly involved in the auctioning and those who also superintended the ridiculous auctioning.
He said all those public officials who supervised the auctioning of the government vehicles must be sanctioned and therefore directed that the report is withdrawn by the committee for members to propose sanctions against those officials before the plenary would adopt the report.
Mr Alex Adjei, a registered auctioneer with Alex Mart, was hauled before the Public Accounts Committee on April 27, 2017, for interrogation over the auctioning of the 24 vehicles.
He was said to have auctioned a Nissan Patrol S/W vehicle with registration number GV 1285 U for GH¢4,000. He also auctioned a Nissan double cabin pickup with registration number GV 1481 U for GH¢2,000 and a Mitsubishi double cabin pickup for just GH¢1,000. A motorbike was also auctioned for GH¢30.
After doing all that and deducting his commission, Mr Adjei refused to transfer the moneys realized from the sales into government chest until the eleventh hour that he was summoned before the Public Accounts Committee.
According to Klutse Avedzi, the PAC came to a conclusion that Mr Adjei did not merit the 7% commission – amounting to GH¢33,302 – since he admitted at the public hearing that he only regularized the sale of the vehicles because they had already been allocated to the beneficiaries.
The committee also recommended sanctions against another auctioneer, one Felix Aduadjoe of Shelta Mart, who also auctioned vehicles belonging to the Ghana Health Services under similar conditions.
The deputy majority leader, Adwoa Safo, said that it was good that parliament had passed the Special Prosecutor Bill which had been assented to by the president and that that Special Prosecutor would definitely delve into matters of this nature.
