DVLA for sale, although generating 100 billion yearly income

"We for sell-sell something! Sell-sell everything! Sell-sell something!" Seems to be the government's remix of a popular Ghanaian Hiplife song by Praye, as it continues to dispose of national assets and institutions with impunity.

The latest government institution being offered for sale is the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) of the Ministry of Road Transport, which generates over ¢ 1 00 billion into the Consolidated Fund annually.

Documents available to The Enquirer from the vault of the authority reveal that the vehicle testing section of the authority has already been secretly privatised.

The management, after clandestinely privatising the vehicle testing section, called a meeting on October 7, this year, to inform the workers of the move, drawing disquiet from the workers, as they listened to their new role under the sale.

The meeting was convened by the Acting Chief Executive of the authority, Mrs Mabel Sagoe.

The situation has been described by a top management person as bogus and fraudulent, saying that the workers and the public who are major stakeholders, were not involved in the privatisation process.

“The DVLA does not need privatisation of any kind but rather a well-tailored decentralisation to generate more revenue as well as the creation of more employment,” he told the Enquirer.

The paper gathered one Mr Oppong is now gunning for the road worthy section of the DVLA and has established a new garage at Dome in Accra, while another one, by an unknown person, has been established at Kuntunse on the Nsawam road.

Inside sources at the DVLA told The Enquirer that most of the workers will be assigned a new role as auditors to these private companies, while others will simply lose their jobs ..

They told the paper that some people outside the authority have been sent outside to be trained to take over that work.

The move has incurred the wrath of the workers because they claim that the DVLA is currently doing well and that there is no need for any privatization.

The sources said that the DVLA pays close to 100 billion cedis (old Ghana cedis) into the consolidated fund.

But as things stand now the figure is likely to go down because of the privatization, it was pointed.

The private companies to benefit from the move are expected to build garages in all the 10 regions of the country.

The insiders said they had long suspected that things were actually wrong somewhere when the authority, after procuring some vehicle testing equipment, left them to rot.

When The Enquirer undercover investigation team went to the premises of the DVLA, the said equipment painted in yellow colour was actually lying idle.

It also emerged during the visit that Mr Oppong's company was using some skeleton machines for the headlight testing.

Approximately, the DVLA currently registers about 200 vehicles daily, with the least charge being GH¢20.00 and the highest being GH¢40.00.

Apart from that, over 1000 vehicles are issued with road worthy certificates daily, with the least charge being GH¢4.00 and the highest being GH¢5.00.