Chop, chop: KMC’s advertising department hacks down trees to line its own pockets

For the right price, officials will install illegal billboards anywhere you want.

KARACHI: Whether you’re a shopkeeper, a transporter or involved in any business, as long as you have some money, you can run an advertising company. Just line the pockets of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), and you can be the proud owner of your own illegal billboard - often at the expense of the city’s greenery.

“Forget about the law,” a source within the KMC told The Express Tribune. “You can install billboards wherever you please: traffic islands, footpaths, pavements, next to traffic signals or even the roof of your house.”

He added that due to the sheer amount of money involved in billboard advertising, no one cared that these unregulated hoardings came at the cost of cutting trees and put the lives of the city’s residents in danger. “Would you believe that Rs750 million is being earned from these illegal installations around Karachi?”



Recently, the KMC’s advertising department put up several new billboards on Shaheed-e-Millat Road. To make them more visible to commuters, advertisers have started chopping down the branches of trees along the thoroughfare. The same is the case near Disco Bakery in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, where all the trees from the traffic lights near the bakery to the Maskan Apartment roundabout have had their limbs lopped off.

KMC administrator Rauf Akhtar Farooqui, however, said that he did not know where billboards were being installed or trees were being cut. “We must ask our advertising department if they obtained No Objection Certificates from the parks director,” he added.

“They do not ask us for permission,” Abdullah Mushtaq, the director of the KMC’s parks and horticulture department, told The Express Tribune. “They don’t even bother to inform us when they are putting up billboards in the parks.” Meanwhile, the outdoor advertising companies just contact the advertising department and chop down trees wherever they want, he added. “Billboards have popped up all over Karachi with no regard for the city’s lungs.”

Former KMC administrator Fahim Zaman Khan said that the ‘billboard mafia’ was involved in hacking down trees in every corner of the city. “The officials are pocketing the money and closing their eyes to the situation,” he claimed. “The media should launch a campaign against the arbitrary cutting down of trees.”

The Express Tribune was unable to reach KMC’s advertising director, Akhtar Sheikh, for his comments.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 18^th, 2014.