‘Clean Accra’ billboards were not removed because of media bashing – Mayor

The Chief Executive of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), Mohammed Adjei Sowah, has asked the media to focus it’s reportage on the President’s dream of making the City the cleanest and best in Africa.

“…We want to ensure that Accra becomes a more disciplined city and then we keep the city clean to beautify the city. That is the vision the President has and we are working towards the vision. And we are asking the people of Accra, especially our friends in the media, to buy into the project so that the commentary should help us to achieve what we want to do,” he urged.

His comment comes in the wake of the public uproar on a supposed huge billboards which were erected in the metropolis with the portrait of himself and the Greater Accra Regional Minister, Ishmael Ashietey.

The two had their images on the billboards erected at vantage points in the capital with the inscription “Welcome to Accra, the Proposed Cleanest City in Africa”

Despite their denial of having anything to do with the said billboards mounted with their portraits, there were social media trolls on the billboards much to the amusement of commentators who argued it was wrong to use scarce resources to mount such billboards, when the city is still contending with filth.

Some individuals within 24hrs were seen all over town pulling down the billboards, but the public were much convinced the move was done at the behest of the officials involved following social media bashing.

Speaking on Anopa Kasapa on Kasapa 102.5 FM, the Mayor of Accra denied reports that the billboards were removed after the flak from the press.

He said there was a consensus among relevant stakeholders within the advertising industry to restore sanity in the system following the indiscriminate siting of billboards in the metropolis that was destroying the beauty of the capital, hence their operation in removing all unauthorized billboards.

“We’d agreed with the advertising association of Ghana and all the partners involved that Wednesday we were starting the operations. Then Wednesday morning somebody probably might have sponsored a PR to denigrate you, then this thing went on social media. That billboard had been there for three weeks, how come nobody was talking about it? But the very morning that all of us have agreed to start operations to pull down all unauthorized billboards, then this matter went into the social media and it went viral. Initially when I saw it, I said fine it’s the usual thing that goes on social media. I don’t talk to a lot of media-Radio and Television so when you’re doing these things, I’ve a very tough skin to be honest with you, I come from Bukom…but people have made up their mind that that is what they want to write, that is what they want to do, I don’t really bother about them.