Observer denies Today Newspaper allegations

Abubacarr Sanyang, Deputy Sales and Marketing Manager of the Observer Company, has refuted a report published by the newly  established newspaper called “Today Newspaper” in their edition of July 12 to 19 2007, captioned  ‘Major newspapers in debt crises’,  in which the Daily  Observer was mentioned as those affected in what they described as a crisis.

Speaking to this reporter yesterday, Mr. Sanyang said that for one to say that Observer Company is owed that much money in millions, can be referred to as terrific and totally false and unfounded.

According to him, it is untrue to imply that Observer Company debt portfolio is more than D2.9 million. This he said has been a great shock and surprise to the management and more especially to the Marketing Department of the Observer Company, which is directly responsible for the putting up of advertisement in the newspaper.

He explained: “Since January 2007, there has been this policy of ‘pay before service’, which requires all customers to pay adequately for their advertisement that they wish to advertise in the Observer Newspaper. This has greatly paid dividend, because going through the debtors list which is produced every month, it is established beyond all reasonable doubt that Observer Company has not incurred two months of advertisement arrears since then. So as a result, it is very interesting to learn that, our customers are owing us more than D2.9 million within the range. Therefore, the information carried by the Today Newspaper is baseless”.

The Deputy Sales and Marketing boss further stated that, the statement that, there are no indications that debtors have paid as stated by Today Newspaper is totally wrong, baseless and unfounded. “This is because we have at the Observer Company a monitoring mechanisms, where any advertisement that goes in the paper is thoroughly assessed to establish whether it is paid or not. By the same length, follow ups are vigorously made to make sure that, no particular institution is an old debtor,” he said.

Mr. Sanyang however welcomed the suggestion by Today Newspaper that customers should be paying up their advertisement as they come in, but quickly noted that Observer Company’s customers are very reliable that Observer does not find it necessary to go ahead with the publication of the names of their debtors. This, he added, is because the customers have been cooperating since the ‘pay before service’ policy was instituted by Dr ABS Taal, Managing Director of the Observer Company.

He then emphasised that with such, they will do no justice to stand by and see their customers being castigated for an allegation that is unfounded.