The Times of India                27.12.2013

Another drive against illegal hoardings

KOZHIKODE: After the district administration, city corporation and KSEB, the public works department has also decided to launch a drive against hoardings placed illegally on the properties of the PWD.

The placing of such hoardings were allegedly responsible for a number of accidents reported in the city.

The recent accident, where a woman two-wheeler rider was killed, was because of a huge hoarding at the Thondayad Junction.

"The deadline for the advertisers and political parties to remove their campaign materials ended on December 20. We would be launching the drive only in first week of January as we require special sanction from the district collector for removing the hoardings," said executive engineer PWD Roads, M V Habeeb.

If the persons and organizations show reluctance to remove the advertisement materials from road, a special squad of the PWD would remove the materials and recover the cost from the persons concerned, he added.

A direction in this regard was published by the PWD in the second week of December. However, not many advertisers and political parties have come up to remove their campaign materials.

"We have not given permission to anyone to place hoardings on the roads especially on PWD land," said the executive engineer.

Every campaign material that affects the free flow of traffic and pose the threat of accident will be removed by the PWD squad, he added.

Though the district administration in 2012 had launched a drive against illegal hoardings by coordinating revenue, police, public works, national highway authority and KSEB to put an end to hoarding menace, the number of illegal flex boards placed in and around the city has not witnessed any decline. Instead new advertisements are appearing on different parts of the city despite of directions issued by the district .

The special squad had started removing illegally placed hoardings, the squad stopped operation a few weeks after the launch of the drive. Only 327 hoardings were removed by the squad during the drive.

KSEB had also launched a drive in May 2013 to remove campaign materials from electric posts. Though the drive assured fresh and clean look to the electricity poles, the drive also ended without success owing to the lack of proper follow up. "We always remove all illegal campaign materials whenever we do some work on the electric poles. But the advertisers are adamant to tie up new banners the next day," said a KSEB official.

"We have also been approaching the police for initiating action against those who illegally fix campaign materials on electric posts. But no action was taken," they said.

The city residents are not much hopeful. "We cannot expect the menace would end as political parties and private companies would influence these officials," alleged K Radhakrishnan, a resident of Athanikkal. However, if they succeed to keep their promise it would be beneficial for many motorists and pedestrians, he added.