AMA calls off exercise to retrieve debt owed it

The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) on Thursday said it was suspending its exercise to retrieve monies owed it by companies because of a court action brought against it by five Telecom operators.

Parker Allotey, the Public Relations Officer told the GNA in an interview that, "for now the AMA has to suspend this action until the court determines the outcome of the issue." The Assembly, which started the exercise on Tuesday with the temporary closure of the head offices of the Barclays and Standard Charted banks, continued on Wednesday and closed down Millicom Ghana Limited and Scancom Ghana Limited, operators of Mobitel and Spacefon respectively.

Both companies owed the assembly a business operating permit fee totaling 2.5 billion cedis. Allotey noted on Wednesday that the AMA task force would on Thursday descend on Ghana Telecom for a similar exercise.

However, a statement signed by five telecom operators in the country soon after the Wednesday exercise said the companies, Millicom Ghana limited, Scancom Limited, Capital Telecom Limited, Celltel Limited and Western Telesystems Ghana Limited have filed a writ challenging the legality of AMA's new tax regime and asked that it should be restrained from interfering with their operations.

It described the action by the AMA to shut down Mobitel and Spacefon as without notice or due process of the law. The statement said the AMA has illegally levied a huge tax on every telecom user in Ghana through the network operators and also discriminated against telecom operators by seeking to charge on a per customer basis when almost all other such fees were set on a flat basis depending on the type of business set up.