The Ghana Music Rights Organisation (GHAMRO) has highlighted the achievements of Rex Omar in the organisation while he served as its Board Chairman.

A statement signed by the Acting Chief Executive Officer of GHAMRO, Jackson Brefo, details Rex's role in making sure there was fair distribution of royalties, better means of collecting royalties, welfare, infrastructural development and transparency.

On the 22nd March 2017, the Authors, Composers, Performers and Publishers of GHAMRO gave Rex Owusu Marfo a mandate to serve as the BOD chairman of Ghana Music Rights Organization (GHAMRO).

The challenge as it laid bare to him was how to steer the five (5) year old organization without a working capital, while operating from a dilapidated four room office shared with two other CMOs as an office to growth and most especially positioning the society to align with the best international standards and practices of collective management operations. The more daunting challenge was how to improve the local public performance collections while building suitable infrastructure for the society.

Without any government intervention or financial support throughout his tenure, Rex Omar was prepared to lead his team for the task ahead.

Fair and Equitable Distribution

For every CMO to live up to its expectation and best international practices, it is imperative that the tenant of Fair and Equitable Distribution is not ignored.

However, the financial burden of owning a monitoring system by a young CMO like GHAMRO without any government intervention is nearly impossible. Poised to see this vision become a reality, Rex Omar’s Administration signed a contract with Global Music Monitoring of Ireland to provide the society with monitored log sheets for Fair and Equitable Distribution. Unrelenting of his vision for GHAMRO to own a monitoring system, his administration engaged with an IT firm to provide a full-featured software for an effective CMO operations. This proposal was submitted to the Ministry of Tourism, Art and Culture for government support. The Ministry approved of the proposal and forwarded the request to the Ministry of
Finance, pending release of the funds.

With a society whose highest earner received around four thousand cedis (GH¢4,000.00) half yearly before Rex took over, the highest earner now receives about fifty thousand cedis (GH¢50,000) every 6 months. Throughout his administration, the society has distributed over twelve million cedis (GH¢12,000,000) to authors, composers and publishers even with the difficulty of the regulatory body withholding its operational license unjustifiably, making collections almost impossible. Amidst all these challenges, he ensures that the entire operations of the organization which he inherited without any working capital is run within 30% of collections as stipulated in the Copyright Regulation 2023 (L.1 2469).

Royalty Collection

At the central stage of every distribution is collection. Indeed, the mechanism for efficient royalty collection is an investment in the collection department of the society. A major source of the society’s revenue (Blank Levy) has become next to nothing and it was therefore important to invest in collection effort. Three vehicles were purchased to supplement the existing ones under his administration. It must be noted that, just about some 5% of Radio/TV stations in Ghana paid for music usage before his administration. Now the percentage of paying music users has increased to over 10%. Though not encouraging, the Rex Omar administration took important steps by suing giant broadcasting networks
like EIB, ABN, Multimedia, Omni Media, Kingdom Group and GBC.

This was the first of its kind and we won some of the cases, and are still pending in court. Rex further led GHAMRO to sue all the major Telco’s like MTN, AIRTEL, TIGO and VODAFONE now TELECEL and won the case. As a matter of fact, a lot of proposal has been made by his administration to the Copyright Office and Office of Attorney General ana Ministry of Justice to amend the Copyright Act, 2005 (Act 690). This, his administration believes will give the society much powers to enforce its mandate.

Infrastructure

Like every other organization which requires capital to set it up, GHAMRO was set up without any form of capital. The only capital the society inherited was a 4 room office used by COSGA and shared by three societies including GHAMRO.

Under his watch and with the collaboration of the two other CMOs, a three story building has been erected to accommodate all the CMOs including GHAMRO.

He further led the society in building its current office in Accra as a temporal facility until the three story project is completed. Presently GHAMRO has offices across the country and strenuous efforts are being made to build GHAMRO offices at all Cultural Centers in Ghana.

Transparency

Ever since Rex Omar took the mantle of GHAMRO’s leadership, his administration directed the management of GHAMRO to run an open door policy, and brought in internal control by employing internal auditor and also engaged external auditors. GHAMRO under Rex has consistently published annual audited accounts which are distributed to the membership and mostly made available on the society’s website.

In fact, it was under his administration that the Office of the Attorney General and Ministry of Justice ordered a thorough audit into the operations of GHAMRO from its inception to ascertain the financial irregularities of the organization. However, nothing untoward was found on the Rex Omar’s administration. Rather, a GH¢2.1million mismanagement of GHAMRO funds was discovered under the Carlos Sakyi led administration. Though Rex Omar is not directly in charge of the day to day management of the society as GHAMRO has a management team led by the Chief Executive Officer, the sound policy direction which his administration has provided over the years has sustained the organisation till date.

Welfare

The Rex Omar lead administration for the first time in the history of the organization, implemented a Tier 3 and life insurance policy for its members.

Under the scheme, members enjoy benefits after losing a Parent or Child whiles their Tier 3 pension is regulated by Metropolitan Insurance.

Having worked at GHAMRO for close to a decade now, I have had the enviable opportunity to work with the man Rex Owusu Marfo and more closely with him for the last one year and I must admit that he is very intuitive, knowledgeable, dutiful, down to earth, selfless, compassionate, yet highly principled and firm. A true leader, teacher and team player!