Business
Vendors Lament Poor Sales In Rivers
The Rivers State
branch of the Nigerian Newspaper Distributors Association has solicited for the support of both newspaper publishers and the Rivers State Government to enable them remain in business.
Former image maker of the association, Ledum Kinanee, told The Tide Monday in his office that matters were getting worse with vendors resulting in good number of them abandoning the business. “Most local, national and International papers have gone on line and we are the loser,” he said.
He said the influence of electronic readership has dimmed chances of success in business as, according to him, most people prefer reading the papers on line instead of buying the papers and this on line instead of buying the papers induces low sale.
He appealed to publishers to post only outside pages on line and allow the rest so that they could lure customers to buy from them.
Kinanee equally mentioned activities of free readers and general low readership habit of Nigerians as challenges frustrating the operations of members.
He said the association has provided employment to over 2,000 Rivers State indigenes and appealed to the Rivers State Government to come to the associations support in providing bus, and permanent office space as found in other states.
He described he services rendered by the association members as a social one with little reward but regretted that while the association was enjoying some assistance from state government, Rivers State was yet to assist its members.
According to him, “we are the grassroot of the ministry of information, we give the light and we are stakeholder in the Port Harcourt World Book Capital Project, “so we want the present administration in the state to carry us along” he said.
Chris Oluoh