‘Illegal’ billboards still stand tall in District East

Rashid Minhas Road, Karsaz Road continue to be dotted with hoardings

KARACHI: Rashid Minhas Road and Karsaz Road continue to be lined with billboards as the Supreme Court's (SC) final deadline to remove them from across the city's public spaces approaches.

On Friday, the SC gave a final deadline of three days to all the civic agencies, including the administrators of the District Municipal Corporations (DMCs) and the chief executive officers (CEOs) of the cantonment boards, and warned that contempt charges will be framed against them if hoardings are still found in their respective jurisdictions.



On July 14, the apex court had already granted an additional week to all the civic bodies for taking down illegal billboards as the original deadline set by it expired on June 30.

About 732 billboards in District East have been removed in compliance with SC's orders, informed East DMC advertisement director Abdul Ghani, adding that as many as 3,500 advertisement poles and pylons have also been removed.

For the billboards which are on the private property but protruding out on the roads, he said that they number around 20 in the district, out of which 16 have been removed and four were removed on Sunday night.

Even the pedestrian bridges have been cleaned off the billboards in the district, he informed. "We are not only removing skins of the billboards but the complete structures," he claimed. However, the hoardings on Rashid Minhas Road and Karsaz Road fall under the jurisdiction of Cantonment Board Faisal's (CBF), Central Ordnance Depot (COD) or Pakistan Navy, remarked Ghani.

CBF's hoarding in-charge Muhammad Qasim said there were 217 billboards on the public property within their jurisdiction which have already been removed. He also said that skins of hoardings are no longer occupying public spaces in Gulistan-e-Jauhar.



Regarding the billboards on Rashid Minhas Road, adjacent to the army-run COD, he said they have written letters to them, but did not get any response. "It is a sensitive area and we cannot operate their without the army's permission," he said.

Meanwhile, District East deputy commissioner Asif Jan Siddiqui acknowledged the presence of illegal hoardings on the Rashid Minhas Road and Karsaz Road. The area falls within the jurisdiction of the cantonment and they would have to present their reason for failing to remove the billboards to the SC, he remarked.

An official of the Inter Services Public Relations informed that cantonments are responsible for dealing with illegal hoardings in their jurisdiction and the COD has nothing to do with it.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 25^th, 2016.