The Advertisers Association of Ghana (AAG), is pushing for the passage of the Advertising Standards Bill to sanitize the industry which it has described as being in a “shameless state”.
The association’s concerns, it has said, stem from the questionable content quality as well as best practices of some advertisers.
Speaking during a meeting with Information Minister, Mustapha Hamid, President of the Association, Joel Nettey, said the Advertising Standard Bill, which has been agreed upon in consultation with all the various stakeholders, will regulate all aspects of the advertising industry, including safety concerns.
In January 2017, the aftermath of a fierce storm left a lot of billboards in the capital toppled in the capital prompting the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), to assure that it will remove billboards mounted illegally in the metropolis by April.
“If you look around Accra, we are in a very shameless state. There is so much clutter. There is danger on our roads. When it gets cloudy and it is about to rain, people panic because you don’t know which billboard is going to fall next,” Mr. Nettey said.
Fingers get pointed towards the advertisers association when billboards fall after storms, but Mr. Nettey stressed that, “not everybody who puts up a billboard is a member of our association.”
The AAG has previously lamented that, attempts to enforce the regulations are disrupted by politicians and in some cases, the AAG itself.
Mr. Nettey is confident that “this Standards Bill will not only regulate the ads field, but will regulate everybody.”
“Today, listen to the media and you will hear all kinds of adverts, but there is no method to that kind of madness. There are condom ads playing at 8:00am when there are kids in a car. We are playing alcohol ads at the same time. But everywhere in the civilized world, there are rules and regulations that govern our kind of industry. All of these things are encapsulated in the proposed Bill.”
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