Officials at the Ashanti regional office of the Microfinance and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC) have impounded items from beneficiaries who have failed to comply with payment plans.
The items, including over 20 tricycles and 12 taxi cabs, were seized from beneficiaries within the Ashanti Region who acquired them since 2012.
MASLOC officials said it had been difficult locating most beneficiaries under the programme since some of them did not give accurate residential addresses.
Speaking to regional correspondent Hafiz Tijani, the Ashanti regional manager of MASLOC, Hajia Zainab Salihu, said her office was working to locate other beneficiaries who had failed to stick to payment terms.
“As of now we have more than 20 tricycles that are parked there and we have 12 cars that have been impounded. One thing that is amazing is that some people collected these cars since 2012 and they have never paid. Some collected the tricycles several years ago, and some people have never paid and that’s the problem,” she lamented.
“If you come and you are willing to pay, we will reschedule the loan for you, the due balance plus the current one you are supposed to pay so that you start paying. There is data on beneficiaries but it is sometimes difficult to identify them. You know Ghanaians, their house numbers are sometimes not correct. So what are we going to do? Now we are identifying them through their passport pictures and also through their voter’s ID cards because you sometimes go round with one passport picture at the location the person gave as his house number and the whole community will say they don’t know the person and we can’t do anything about it. But we are still working around it. As far as Ghana is concerned, wherever you are one day we will find you and we are involving the police because it’s not an easy task.”
Hajia Salihu warned that officials were working with police to arrest persons who were rebranding items belonging to MASLOC.
Source: Ghana/AccraFM.com
