AMA closes down Millicom and Scancom

The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (A.M.A) on Wednesday continued its exercise to retrieve tax owed it leading to the closure of Millicom Ghana Limited and Scancom Ghana Limited, operators of Mobitel and Spacefon respectively.

Both companies owed the assembly a business operating permit fee of 2.5 billion cedis. The exercise, which started on Tuesday with the temporary closure of the head offices of Barclays and Standard Chartered banks on the high street in Accra, was aimed at retrieving monies owed the assembly.

It was also to warn corporate bodies operating within the Accra metropolis of their responsibilities to pay taxes promptly. Mr. Parker Allotey, Public Relations Officer of the A.M.A told GNA that, "the exercise will continue until all monies owed the assembly is collected."

He said the Assembly was prepared to accept negotiated payments with the two cellular phone companies but cautioned that, "If they refuse to comply with our directives they will have no option than to close down the two organisations."

He also said that the AMA task force would on Thursday descend on Ghana Telecom for a similar exercise. A visit to the Millicom Ghana Limited and Scancom Ghana Limited by the GNA indicated that the assembly's task force arrived at the premises of the two companies as early as 0700hours to perform the exercise.

Workers and customers that came to transact business with the companies were prevented from entering the offices. Efforts made to talk the head of the task force proved futile. Meanwhile in a statement signed by some of the telecom operators in the country described the action by the AMA to shut down Mobitel and Spacefon as without notice or due process.

Consequently, 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 and to restraint AMA from interfering with their operation.

The statement said the AMA has illegally levied a huge tax on every telecom user in Ghana through the network operators and also discriminates against telecom operators by seeking to charge on a per customer basis when almost all other such fees are set on a flat basis depending on the type of business.