The Special Task force composed by government to track and retrieve all State assets is frustrating Members of Parliament, a former Minister of State in the Mahama administration has said.
According to Rashid Pelpuo, the task force since its constitution had been nothing, but a thorn in the flesh of some members of the country’s law making chamber stating that “it is so unnecessary and unacceptable.”
“A number of members of parliament have complained that they [the task force] have stopped them to [question] them on the vehicles they have bought themselves,” he disclosed in an interview with Nii Arday Clegg on Morning Starr on Monday.
According to him, “If you take over the administration of a country, you take over the assets and the liabilities. There is a handing over process. There was a transition process. There was a transition team [and] if you have any question about state property, it is better to ask all the question so they tell you everything.
“But if there is no such a thing at all and they have just a thing that somebody may have stolen property so let’s imagine that they are kept outside our reach so let’s take a task force and search for them. It is going to be….it is going to look like a situation where they are going to harass individuals as if you took power not by democratic means but some other means and you are exerting your authority.”
The Akufo-Addo administration last week announced the setting up of a special task force to track and retrieve all state assets with certain individuals including ex government officials who are yet to return those assets.
Its membership include; the Ghana Police Service, Bureau of National Investigations, the Ghana Revenue Authority (Customs Division), the Driver Vehicle Lisensing Authority and Office of the President.
According to the Chief of Staff, Frema Osei-Opare, in a statement, various state assets including landed properties and vehicles are yet to be handed over to government by individuals contrary to law.
She thus encouraged “persons with state properties unlawfully in their possession should endeavor to contact the task force and make arrangements to surrender same with immediate effect.”
The setting up of the Task Force comes days after some security officials stormed the residence of the National Organiser of the National Democratic Congress Kofi Adams to seize some five vehicles which allegedly belonged to the state.
The NDC, however, warned that any form of attack in the name of retrieving alleged looting of state property will be “resisted” by its members.
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