After months of seizure of vehicles from former officials EX-NPP Ministers threaten govt over unpaid refund

MONTHS AFTER the National Democratic Congress (NDC) led administration, under President John Evans Atta Mills, has prevailed upon former government officials to return government vehicles, The Chronicle can report that some Ministers under the erstwhile New Patriotic Party (NPP) government have still not received a refund of their monies, and are therefore preparing a legal suit against the government.

According to checks and information available to this paper, the Ministers who duly paid for the vehicles until they were asked to return them, are putting their documents together to battle the government over the delay of the refunds, without any justifiable reason.

“We respected the government when it directed that we should all return the cars. Ideally, we should not have returned them, because we passed through due process and acquired the cars, but we obliged to the directives of the government. We would have thought that the government would, as matter of urgency, refund our monies to avoid litigation,” an ex-Minister opined on condition of anonymity.

The ex-Minister continued: “As I speak with you now, most of my colleagues have not been paid, and we wonder about the rational behind the delay. However, some of us are contemplating taking legal action against the government to retrieve our monies. We need our money back,” the source said.

Accordingly, some ex-Ministers, who interacted with this paper, expressed dismay over the action of the government, stressing, “We thought that wisdom would prevail for them to quickly refund our monies, just as they were in a rush to retrieve the cars.”

The affected ex-Ministers, who expressed their strong reservations about the issue, appealed to the government to, as a matter of urgency, refund their monies to avoid further controversy.

“We would not like to engage in any confrontational approach. It is our hope that the government must do its best to pay us. Once you have decided to change the situation, it is equally good that our monies be refunded.”

Checks conducted by this paper revealed that though individuals like Dr. Aggrey Ntim, a former Minister of Communications, Cecilia Dapaah and others were paid, the likes of Papa Owusu Ankomah, former Minister of Justice and Attorney-General, Mr. Albert Kan Dapaah, former Minister of Defence, Abubaka Saddique, former Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, among a host of others have still not been paid.

It would be recalled that days after the National Democratic Congress (NDC) assumed office, some operatives at the Castle embarked upon the retrieval of cars from the former government officials, with the assumption that they illegally took away the cars.

Government sources also hinted this paper that most of the cars were still in the custody of the ex-Ministers, while the people who paid for the cars before the variation are being kept in limbo.

Whilst some of the ex-Ministers claimed that they legally bought the cars, the government directed that such cars should be returned, because they were not due to be sold. According to the government, it needed the cars to conduct the activities of the government, hence the decision.

Some Ministers were threatened before they returned their cars, others willingly surrendered the cars though they had paid for them, but have since not been given their monies.

When the Chronicle contacted the Chief Director at the Presidency to crosscheck the matter, he indicated he was in a meeting. Efforts to reach him at the time of going to press proved futile.