Rid Kenyans of ‘ghost cars’ burden, group demands

By Ally Jamah

A civil society organisation is now calling for a comprehensive audit of Government vehicles to root out ‘ghost cars’ that are illegally consuming taxpayers’ millions in fuel and maintenance.

The head of Mars Group Kenya, Mwalimu Mati says Kenyan taxpayers may be paying heavily to maintain non-existent cars because the total number of Government vehicles is still kept a secret.

"The Government is no longer revealing the total number of government cars in the budget as was the tradition before 2007, and that opens a huge door to massive corruption," he said.

"If vehicles do not exist then their running costs cannot be loaded onto the Budget. This closes a giant loophole for misapplication of public funds," he said.

In the last three years, the Government has bought cars worth Sh7.9 billion and then spent another Sh15.2 billion on running costs. Last year alone, Sh3.3 billion was spent on cars while Sh5 billion was used to maintain them with Sh3.2 billion used to buy fuel and lubricants.

"Maximum attention is required to ensure the hard-earned resources of Kenyans are not wasted through corruption," said Mwalimu Mati.

Mars calling on MPs to scrutinise the budget allocation for purchasing and maintaining Government cars and to push for a car count to save millions of taxpayers’ money that may be ending in private pockets.

One official car

Mati suggested that a vehicle count can be conducted by the Efficiency Monitoring Unit (EMU), which has such a capacity.

Mati also called on the Government to ensure it implements its policy of assigning only one official car to Ministers, Assistant Ministers and Permanent Secretaries to cut transport expenses.

The policy, released in June 2006 by Head of Public Service Francis Muthaura also barred civil servants from using official vehicles as transport to and from their homes. It appears that this requirement is yet to come into effect.

Mati also wants the Government to account for the 488 State vehicles sold since June 2006 saying the proceeds of Sh194 million have not been reflected in any Budget since.