....in Kpone car market cost... Actual fee a mystery

AS THE nation's harbour city, Tema, reels under a report from the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) implicating Municipal Chief Executive, Evans Ashong Narh, and two of his right-hand men in ignoring laid down procedures while awarding a ?1.2billion contract, yet another scandal seems to be looming.

A cloud of controversy is hanging over the actual amount spent on the Kpone car market.

The Progressive Car Dealers, an association of automobile sellers at Tema, are as a result, praying the SFO to institute an investigation into that project.

The chairman of the Progressive Car Dealers, Prince Kwasi Owusu who disclosed this to the Chronicle in an interview, said there has been so much inconsistency over the figure that the only option is for a probe.

He stated that in 1998, the then Tema Development Corporation (TDC) managing director, Ayi-Bonte made it known that the project was ?800million.

Last year, he said, the Tema MCE, during a discussion told the car dealers that Government spent ?1.8bilion on the car market.

Surprisingly, he said, on Monday, the TDC board chairman, Nana Agyensaim VI, told the world that the very project cost ?6billion. This discrepancy, Mr. Kwasi Owusu said, raised eyebrows.

According to him, since the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government came to power, there has not been any job done at the site to warrant the variation, considering the fact that the Ayi-Bonte administration initiated and executed the project.

He went on to state that most of the fencing works at the site were undertaken at costs to the owners and therefore views the latest claims as strange enough.

According to him, proposals made for the car market included a bank, police post among others but all these did not take place and could not physically see what ?6billion had done at the site.

On why car dealers in Tema remained at a defiant position contrary to orders from the authorities to relocate to Kpone, the chairman said history has taught them that both TMA and TDC are not consistent with their directives.

He recounted the ordeal of artisans in the Tema township who were relocated at Kpone a little over a decade ago.

The rule was for all artisans to go to the Kpone Light Industrial Area for which a large acreage of land was procured.

The law-abiding ones adhered and went to Kpone but the same TMA and TDC permitted some of the artisans to stay and practise their trade in the city proper, thereby short cutting those at Kpone whose businesses were affected.

No wonder the otherwise light industrial area has turned out to be a residential place since most of the artisans sold their plots to residential developers or did so themselves.

Those who went to Kpone at first are smarting under avalanche of debts because of poor business due to their location.

At the time they were being forced to go to Kpone, the municipal authorities and the TDC have allotted plots and permitted some of their colleagues to do business on the Spintex Road and at other advantageous locations.

The Chronicle gathered that so much party politics has been read into the issue of relocating the car dealers that even the security agencies fear to descend on them, least they would be fired.

In a related development, the secretary of the Ashaiman Youth Congress (AYOC) Maxwell Osai Addo has called for the immediate removal from office of both TMA and TDC heads.

According to him, over the period, these people proved inefficient to run the affairs of the municipality.

He cited the Kpone refuse dump fumigation contract that has exposed the local administrators.

He said that the TMA is aware of the report of the SFO and on Friday embarked on demolition of kiosks at Tema Community One but orders from no where stopped them.

The exercise, he said was only done as a cover up for their poor handling of sanitation and other facilitators in Tema.

Maxwell Addo referred to the state of Ashaiman which is turning into a junk. Metal workers and scrap dealers have lined up the streets.

He wants the TMA to take the criticism in good faith instead of rushing to defend the indefensible.