General News of Tuesday, 3 October 2017

Source: Nana Kwabena Agyare

NDC hugely inflated costs of MASLOC cars

Maame Afia Akoto Maame Afia Akoto

Deputy Director for Microfinance and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC), Maame Afia Akoto has debunked speculations that her office is declining to distribute vehicles acquired by the previous administration because of political reasons.

According to her, the former administrators reached a deal with a company to provide cars to aid the The Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU) a deal she described as being laudable.

However after reviewing the deal they realized there was something wrong that needed to be resolved before the cars could be distributed. The deputy Communications director of the new patriotic Party said they uncovered that the prices of the cars had been inflated and until that issue was resolved, they were not going to approve the distribution of the cars.

Maame Afia Akoto said the costs at which the cars were going to be given out to drivers were rather going to put burdens on them. According to her, drivers who would have benefited from the program would not have been able to pay for the cars in a period of five years.

"After doing our review of the deal we realised there was a problem with the deal. We kept on wondering what pushed their decision to enter such a deal because the drivers would not have been able to pay for the cars even if they were given five years," she said on Yensempa.

According to her, the costs of the cars given her office were far expensive than how the cars were sold at the various car Garages in the Country. She added that the GPRTU declined to accept the cars because they knew the cost of the cars were cheaper than what they were being offered by MASLOC.

Speaking on Agoo tv's Yensempa show to host Obaasima Serwaa Akoto, Maame Afia Akoto explained there were several deals the previous administrators entered into that her office will in due time address and bring to the public notice.

"This MASLOC issue is one of the many issues we had planned to address in the future. There are several of these issues we would want to address in the future but for now we will hold on to them."

The deputy communications director of the NPP revealed that a renegotiation with the car suppliers did not yield any fruit hence her office's decision to terminate the contract.

According to her the sole purpose of her office is to assist the financially challenged in the country not to extort monies from them using institutions like MASLOC so they were not going to agree to anything that was different from that.

She assured the public that her office was going to resolve all issues and make sure that MASLOC performs the duties it was established to perform.