Two PBC civil servants rent cocoa trucks to debt-distressed company – Dep. Minister reveals rot
The Deputy Minister for Agriculture, Kennedy Nyarko Osei has attributed the abysmal performance of the Produce Buying Company (PBC) to greed among some senior managers.
He said, PBC owes 10 different banks to the tune of GHC 700 million.
“When we took over the ministry in 2017, PBC was totally comatose because everybody was afraid to loan them money, even the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) was not ready to loan them money for their operations, meanwhile some time ago PBC was leading in the purchase of cocoa” he said
The deputy Minister in an interview on Okay FM monitored by The Ghana Report, said PBC is investigating two senior managers accused of abusing their offices and conflict of interests.
This was after it received a petition from a whistle blower revealing that two senior PBC manager have devised ways to ground vehicles of the company(PBC).
“Two senior managers, one in-charge of Technical and Haulage and the other in-charge of Marketing, Monitoring and Evaluation have devised ways to ground the company’s vehicles that is meant to cut the operational cost and are renting to PBC their own vehicles from their private company and they are making millions of Ghana cedis at the expense of the taxpayer”
“Often time, when we hear scandals of such nature, we are quick to blame and judge politicians for it but usually these heinous crimes of milking the nation are committed by civil servants” he bemoaned.
He said, the Ministry is frustrated at the PBC Board for ‘failing to take sufficient action’ on the petition.
“The sector Minister and the Finance Minister are very angry about this matter; they are planning to dissolve the board” Kennedy Nyarko Osei said.
The deputy Minister for Food and Agriculture said the government has prevailed on all 10 banks to grant PBC a six-year moratorium period to settle the debt.
Osei Nyarko said, the Ministry is preparing to hand over the matter to the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) to commence criminal investigations at PBC.