The New Indian Express 31.05.2013
1,100 illegal hoardings in city
The crash of three structurally-weak hoardings in different parts of the Twin Cities during Wednesday’s rain is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
There are several such hoardings in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) limits which may collapse any time if one or two heavy spells of rain occurs again.
As per the officials records of the GHMC, there are about 600 hoardings in its limits unauthorisedly erected by the advertising agencies and others and let out to commercial establishment at huge monthly rents. Unofficially, there are another 500 hoardings in the GHMC limits which do not have Advertisement Identification Number (AIN).
Meanwhile, GHMC commissioner MT Krishna Babu has directed all the 2,684 hoardings owners/agencies under the GHMC limits to submit their structural designs along with the structural stability certificates within seven days.
The commissioner, who held a review meeting with GHMC officials in the wake of Wednesday’s hoarding crashes, said that GHMC would get the details furnished by the agencies cross-checked by independent agencies such as JNTU and Osmania University and draw conclusions regarding the stability of the hoardings.
The commissioner directed the deputy commissioners of circles 8 and 9 to issue notices to Prakash Arts agency and Venkateswara Advertisement agency, whose two hoardings in the Nizam College grounds and one hoarding in Himayatnagar respectively collapsed on Wednesday. Similar, notices are to be issued to structural engineering firms M/s Becon Consultancy and M/s Builders & Planners.
The show-cause notices would seek to know why the agencies should not be black-listed and why criminal action should not be taken against the structural engineers for issuing false stability certificates for the collapsed hoardings.
Babu also said that GHMC would not allow hoardings removed in the path of the Hyderabad Metro Rail to be re-erected anywhere else in the city.
The commissioner said that he would hold a review meeting on June 3 with the municipal standing counsel to discuss the court cases pertaining to the advertisement wing.
Earlier, the structural stability of hoardings was to be certified by the GHMC engineering wing but for reasons best known to the GHMC senior officials, this has been done away with in the last few years. Now based on the certificate given by the licensed structural engineers, the GHMC estate wing is renewing licenses as well as giving fresh permissions for erecting new hoardings.
As per the statistics of the GHMC, as many as 599 hoardings have been erected illegally in 18 circles. About 2,684 hoardings have been permitted in the GHMC limits at various locations.
However, the officials claim that they removed 468 illegal hoardings in 2011-12. An additional 131 hoardings are yet to be removed - 19 of them in the East Zone, 57 in the West Zone, 27 in the North Zone and 14 each in the South and Central zones respectively.
Though the GHMC expected to earn a revenue Rs 50 cr from the advertisements, it could earn a mere Rs 23.88 crore in 2011-12. Of that, the income from hoardings was only Rs 14.65 cr.
These figures were given to the general body held on December 15 last year.
