Abeiku Sagoe
There is a brewing controversy over activities of Audiovisual Rights Society of Ghana (ARSOG), the body responsible for protecting the rights of owners of audiovisual works in Ghana.
Some stakeholders in Ghana’s film industry have started raising ‘red flags’ about how the society goes about collecting and distributing royalties on behalf of actors.
Accusations and counter-accusations point out to the fact that not majority of Ghanaian actors have been receiving their royalties for a very long time.
But Abeiku Sagoe, Secretary of ARSOG, yesterday told Hitz FM that the society, until two years ago, has been giving actors royalties to film producers instead of giving it to the actors themselves direct.
“We give the performers moneys to the producers, expecting that they would go and pay the actors. But over the years the performers have been complaining they have not been receiving anything from the producers. Indeed, I have also featured in movies. I know that my producers have received the moneys on my behalf but I have not been paid by any producer,” he said.
“So two years ago we have decided that that should be the end of it and then asked the performers who have performed in a film that has been assigned to ARSOG to come forward to regularise their membership,” Abeiku Sagoe added.
According to him, after putting together all performers who were featured in films or movies assigned to ARSOG, they were about five thousand plus performers. However, he said the society didn’t send the actors their royalties, and the reason was that they have not regularised their membership with the society even though he acknowledged that the films in which the actors performed in were already assigned to ARSOG.
“We cannot just give money on assumption,” he added, even though the society can actually identify the actors in the films it has been assigned to.
Some agitated stakeholders are also raising concerns about why they did not create a system that would recognise every actor irrespective of whether they were registered with ARSOG or not.
An observer of the entertainment scene wondered what becomes of the moneys the society collects on behalf of the performers in the films assigned to ARSOG since the moneys won’t be given to the right owners.
Besides, the fact that many actors are ignorant about registering with the society, there are also questions as to why the society was previously sending moneys through producers, knowing that the actors were not registered with the society.