Mitsubishi Fuso executives penalized for delayed recall

TOKYO: Mitsubishi Fuso Truck & Bus, 85 percent owned by DaimlerChrysler, said the company's president, Harald Boelstler, and two other executives will return portions of their pay because of a delayed vehicle recall.

Boelstler and the company's chairman, Keisuke Egashira will both return 10 percent of one month's salary, a company vice president, Naoya Hasegawa, told reporters Friday in Tokyo. Hasegawa will return 30 percent of one month's pay. It is the first time Boelstler has been penalized since he took the post in June 2005.

Japan's transport ministry in September ordered Fuso, the country's third-largest truckmaker, to improve after the company delayed filing a recall to fix faulty suspension parts. Quality has come under increased scrutiny in Japan after the country's carmakers had their second-worst year ever in terms of recalls in the 12 months ended March 31.

Fuso took more than a year to file the recall after first discovering the defects in June 2005, the same month Boelstler took office, according to the ministry.

The company in January also took back 56,000 trucks after a wheel fell off one of its heavy-duty models. About 24 percent of the vehicles had already been fixed in a previous recall in 2004. That recall came two years after a crash in which a wheel also fell off a truck, killing a pedestrian and injuring her two children. Boelstler did not work at Fuso when that happened.

Source: [url=http://www.reliableplant.com/article.asp?pagetitle=Mitsubishi%20Fuso%20executiv es%20penalized%20for%20delayed%20recall&articleid= 5759]Reliable Plant Magazine[/url]