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$40 million spent on 200 metro mass buses, only 116 in Ghana

According to the MP for Ayawaso West Wuogon constituency, Emmanuel Kyeremateng Agyarko, government went in for a $40 million loan facility to purchase 200 buses from China, but the whereabouts of 84 buses cannot be accounted for.

 

This means only 116 buses were brought into the country.

The latest revelation adds to the jigsaw puzzle surrounding the operations of metro mass transport limited.

Speaking on Citi FM’s current affairs programme “The Big Issue,” Agyarko urged Occupy Ghana to go behind the bus branding and look at the number of buses in Ghana.

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“I think that Occupy Ghana must go beyond the branding and begin to look at those buses themselves. Government went for a loan of 40 million dollars to procure 200 buses. So far they have done 116. You must find out why the remaining buses have not come in yet,” he said.

“If you go on and begin to interrogate those buses, you will find out that the branding is chicken feed. I am saying that go and find out how come $40 million imports 200 buses, if work out the difference, [it will mean that] one Chinese bus comes up to a cost of 200,000 dollars. I think it is ridiculous,” he added.

Occupy Ghana secured a court judgement ordering government to make public document surrounding metro mass bus branding saga.

A leading member of the group, Mr. Ace Ankomah, published the one page contract and said the document "is scandalous and insulting to Ghanaians that the entire Smartty's 'Contract', when it finally came to be signed, was effectively just a-ONE-PAGE document."

"And when one takes out the puffs and fluffs on that page, the only terms are captured in six (6) lines!""The second page was for signatures, and then some 5 or so pages of useless documents generated by Smartty's were added to pad and beef it up," he said."Yes, almost $1m of your money was being frittered away in an illegal sweetheart transaction with the yet-undenied endorsement of the Office of the President (the same Office of the President that ordered the investigation and does not have the courage, spine to publish the AG's report), and they didn't even bother to get a first-year lawyer to write a half-decent contract."

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"Worse, the Minister DID NOT SIGN THE CONTRACT."

The branding initially cost GHC3.6 million but upon a review, Smarttys management and production, the company at the centre of saga, was made to refund GHC1.5 million.

Then minister of road and transport, Gzifa Attivor, resigned from her position after the matter became public.

In her most recent comments, she asked Voltarians to vote for the ruling party because a change of government to the opposition New Patriotic Party could land her in jail.

She was widely slammed for the comments.

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