�Cheapest Gov�t Car Goes For GH�1,000� �Dep. Chief of Staff

Deputy Chief of Staff, Alex Segbefia, has refuted media reports that government official vehicles are being sold at 50.00Gp to individuals within the framework of the NDC government. Mr. Segbefia claims that since the government came into power about 11months ago, it has never sold a car for less than an amount of GH�1,000.00 or 10 million cedis. According to him, the valuation of cars is carried out by Customs Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS) officials or its agents, and not the statutory vehicles Allocation Committee set up by the government. Speaking in an interview with Oman FM, he was categorical in his assertion that nowhere since the committee came under the new government, had it sold a car for 50Gp as being speculated. Mr. Segbefia was also emphatic that neither the government nor the committee was involved in the valuation of the cars. �The cheapest that I am reliably informed is GH�1,000.00; the 50Gp are nominal figures. I asked whether I could be told the lowest value of any vehicle that had gone through the allocation process, and I was told it was GH�1,000.00. There is a minimum that has been put on all vehicles so that, no vehicle will be sold for less than GH�1,000.00,� he stated. The Deputy Chief of Staff was reacting to media reports that over four hundred, (400) vehicles have been virtually taken away from the Tema Port for free as National Democratic Congress (NDC) operatives abuse a loose chit system, using the name of the Presidency or the National Security Council (NSC), the ferry confiscated cars away. According to a �Daily Guide� publication on Thursday, December 17th, car parks at the harbor, such as the Golden Jubilee Terminal, Safebond and Transit Terminal where these cars are parked, have been allegedly inundated with activists who storm the places with chits, for allocation of cars at very ridiculous prices. But Mr. Segbefia disclosed that, whenever the cost of a car was in dispute as to the duty to be paid on it or transfers to be made; the data had to be feed into a computer, adding that �there was a box in which a nominal value is put whiles the controversy is being resolved.� Explaining further, he said: �CEPs puts in a nominal figure so that the computer can accept the details and deal with the transactions. So you will get 50Gp, 30Gp, 15Gp, just so that, the computer accepts the entry that you are doing,� he said. However, Alex Segbefia pointed out that there were so many inputs that go into the pricing of a car, as such; the public should not be made to believe that government cars are being sold at very ridiculous prices. More importantly, he said it is accident cars that were mostly being sold, and that also affects the pricing of the cars. �In reality, it will not give you the full picture, because you do not know whether the car that is being bought is an accident car, whether it is 10 years or 15 years. You have to know all these before you value the car,� he added.