By Hussein J-Isah
The Abuja Municipal Area Council, AMAC, has again trained over 200 staff of the Mobile Advert Unit on revenue collection strategies in an effort to contain harassment of residents and eliminate the high incident touting, responsible for misrepresentation of its image.
The Chairman of AMAC, Honourable Christopher Zakka Maikalangu, represented at the event by the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Public Affairs, Hon. Kingsley Madaki, revealed that some touts are impersonating officials of the council, promising that security agents will be going after those behind the misconduct.
He explained that, “It is unfortunate that many touts are tarnishing the image of AMAC by harassing motorists using our name. The people you see here are our real staff. Annually, we train and retrain them, for them to know the implications of what they accepted to do as their job. We do the training twice a year. We invite professionals and security agencies from the military, the police, NSCDC, and others to train our staff on how to approach our clients on revenue collection.
“Sometimes we even send them to Lagos. Sometimes, we send them outside the country. It is not as if we don’t know what we are doing. What they are doing is under the ambit of the law. The touts people complain that are harassing them are not AMAC staff. They wear jackets and claim to be AMAC staff, but when we arrest them, they will claim to be from NURTW or DOAS, that is FCTA. So, there is a difference between AMAC officials and the touts. The Executive Chairman of AMAC has given a directive. From next week Monday, you will see a special task force that’ll be picking them one after the other.
“We know our staff and can identify them through the censored ID cards they are using. So, my message to the public is that whenever you see those people, those ones that always jump into people’s car, arrest them. If you see them losing plate numbers, call the nearest police station or come to the information office of the council and report them. We know what to do.
“As for the trainees, I’ve advised them several times. I’ve told them to work under the ambit of the law. They are our ambassadors. They are the ambassadors of AMAC. The council is looking up to them and the public is also observing what they are doing.”
In same vein, the council’s Head of Admin- AMAC Mobile Advert and Operational Permit, Mr Ignatius Okechukwu, assured that the training will help in dealing with fake revenue agents impersonating and tarnishing the image of the council, leading to misconception.
“What is happening here is training and retraining of AMAC staff. There are a lot of misconceptions going on, that AMAC officials act like touts. So we want to prove that we are not touts. We are training and retraining AMAC officials. This is the second time we are having this training in this place. We had it last year, today, we are repeating the same thing. So we are here to correct that misconception people are having about AMAC. AMAC is a well-organized institution, and we are constitutionally empowered to do our job.
“We are not harassing anybody. We are doing our legitimate job, empowered by the Nigerian constitution. Section 7 empowers us to do our job, so we’re not harassing anybody. The only problem we have is that Nigerians don’t like to pay tax. We always like to evade tax. There are a lot of tax evasion cases going on. So what we are doing is not harassment. We are doing our legitimate job. And our staff members are well trained. You can witness what is happening here. It has happened before, and it is happening now, live.
“The problem we have on the road is that there are some people claiming to be AMAC, but they are fake. That is the misconception or confusion people are having. This training will help us to sanitize the whole team, help us to flush them out. They don’t have a job. If you catch any of them, they will call themselves DOAS. They don’t have a job. They are even acting ignorantly. They don’t know anything. So we are the main people and we know what we are doing. We have not witnessed where they are training their staff, even for once. They have not done that.
“Before the start of this training, I have already told the trainees to listen and make sure they capture what is coming out from the mouth of the trainer. They should not concentrate on him but listen very carefully so that they will get his message. What the chairman of AMAC requested from us is orderliness and we are doing that. If we are not doing that, we wouldn’t be on the road and we wouldn’t be having this training today. We train our staff so that we improve in whatever we are doing.
“They will be given a certificate of merit for coming for the training and it will empower them in case the person goes out there to look for another job. It’s an additional certificate of what he has, so the training is very important to make them responsible,” he explained.
About The Author
