The Accra Metropolitan Assembly’s Revenue subcommittee Chairman, Robert Kwame Dadzie, has emphasized the Assembly’s resolve to ensure sanity in the billboard advertising space by ensuring all advertisers have paid for permits.
This follows reports of defaulting agencies resisting the AMA’s attempts to remove their billboards for non-payment.
[contextly_sidebar id=”j7GL5zcn2fQxfIij3KNgdEoweYyqxARi”]Mr. Dadzie on Eyewitness News stated that, “either they will come and pay our money to us or we will go after them.”
Most of the defaulting agencies are not members of the Advertisers Association of Ghana (AAG), as he noted that only about 10 percent of that Association’s members are yet to settle their debts.
“We have non-AAG members doing the same business and they are the ones who owe the assembly more. Some people like Tecno have so many billboards in the metropolis… we have more than 13 companies in the metropolis who are owing the assembly and the amount is not a small amount.”
The AMA had given the defaulting agencies a week’s notice and they were well aware of the assembly’s crackdown, according to Mr. Dadzie, who added that any possible lawsuits against the AMA would be futile.
“They can’t do that [sue] because a majority of them don’t have the permit from the assembly. Before you can rent a billboard, you have to pass through some processes. You have to apply to the assembly… the majority of them don’t have it [a permit].”
Advertisers Association backs AMA
The General Secretary of the AAG, Francis Dadzie, is in full support of the AMA’s moves.
He said it was only right all advertisers played by the same rules.
“A lot of them [defaulting agencies] took advantage of the change in government and the political activities in 2016, and went to put the boards there without permits and they continued this year [2017].”
“The AMA comes to our office, they know where we are, and come to collect cheques on behalf of our members. So why should other individuals take advantage of the system and not pay for the same business? It is not fair.”
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By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana