Workers of the Driver Vehicle and Licensing Authority (DVLA) are kicking against a directive from the Authority’s Chief Executive Officer, Rudolf Beckley that all revenue collected by licensing offices be transferred into the Consolidated Fund.

According to the directive, all regional and district offices of the Authority are to deposit monies collected into special bank accounts created at the Bank of Ghana (BoG).

Monies from licence duties and new licences are supposed to be paid into a BoG account number 1018231511156.

On the other hand, monies accrued from registration and road worthy certificates are to be paid into the account number 1018631540287.

Those accumulated from all third party activities must be paid into an Ecobank account number 0530134454809601.

According to the directive, the amount deposited into these accounts will be split by the BoG and the Authority while 15 percent will be retained in a special account.

A copy of the directive issued to the DVLA

This means the DVLA can only access this monies after proper justification to the Finance Ministry.

But an investigation by Joy News' Kwetey Nartey indicates that there is a groundswell of anger among the workers who are against the directive.

They claim that the move is not only illegal but will grind the operations of the Authority to a halt.

“It is difficult to take money that is going into government chest. If the law is amended then government can do whatever it wants with the money but until then, we will keep the 15 percent and give 85 percent to government. We want government to retain the current structure”, one worker told Kwetey.

The law in LI 1802 stipulates that “a department that has legislative approval to retain all or a portion of Internally Generated Funds collected, must first lodge the retained Internally Generated Funds in gross into the Department’s Operational Bank Account designed by the Controller and Accountant-General before disbursements are made”.

But Joy News’ checks reveal that the Sunyani, Kumasi, Nkawkaw and Ho licensing offices have begun paying all revenues collected into the BoG account.

The Sunyani DVLA office has paid 27,954 cedis since the directive was given this year August 10, while Ho has paid 789 cedis on 21 and 24 August.

The DVLA makes about 5 million cedis annually, about 700,000 cedis is retained and the rest paid into the consolidated fund.

But government now wants everything paid into the consolidated fund.

Some top officials of the DVLA believe the new directive is a ploy by the government to make more money.

They however fear that the move will cripple operations of the DVLA because getting money from the consolidated account will be difficult.

Manager of Finance at the DVLA Andrews Denteh says they are only following instructions from the Finance Ministry

“We are controlled by the Ministry of Finance and they give us policy directives and we are to comply. If the budget statement has stated clearly that this must be done, and we have official letters written to us to comply with the statement, then as an authority we have to comply”.