The Advertisers Association of Ghana (AAG) has expressed its frustration over the failure of the government to pass laws to regulate activities in the advertisement sector.
Speaking to the media, the President of AAG, Andrew Ackah, said that the lack of proper legislation is part of the reason the Association is not making any progress and is faced with a lot of challenges.
Andrew Ackah was particularly not happy with the Parliament of Ghana which he said has failed to pass the Advertising Bill, even though the bill has been in the house for years.
‘Every serious country within the African Continent has a regulation that governs advertising. Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa; all these big countries with big markets within Africa do have a regulation when it comes to advertising, because advertising is a big deal. Unfortunately, we don’t. I’ll give you an example. I’m pretty certain you’ve seen the proliferation of billboards everywhere, right? Why should it be? It didn’t used to be that.
‘We have a lot to do.
And I think that for us to progress and move faster, we will need the advocacy for the advertising bill for it to go through parliament, for it to be assessed, to be made robust, so that it can be passed finally. So that we can have an authority that regulates the entire industry. It’s been about twelve to 14 years coming,’ he said.
The AAG president added, ‘We’ve gone through parliament, the last parliament session before 2017, it had actually gone to the floor of parliament. We had the first reading, and then all of a sudden, we couldn’t go through the 2nd, 3rd, 4th session. Parliament rose and there was a new government’.
He, therefore, urged Ghana’s legislators to expedite the process when the bill comes before it so there would be a law to govern the advertisement sector.
Source: Ghana Web