Kolkata: The Mayor of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) Firhad Hakim on Friday announced that the state government has approved the new advertisement policy which will help in tackling the issue of illegal hoardings in the city.
Addressing a Press conference, the Mayor said that from now on tenders for hoardings will be floated road-wise.
The highest bidder will get the permission to install hoardings on that particular road. This will stop any haphazard and random installations, Hakim said.
The Mayor added that the move will not just help increase revenue for KMC but also put a stop to illegal hoardings.
Hakim also highlighted that the new policy entails use of renewable sources of energy for illumination to decrease carbon footprint. Standard sizes of the hoarding board and minimum distance between two hoardings need to be specified.
Also, to increase the aesthetic beauty of the city, the policy suggests construction of a circular framing unipole/monopole with standard size display. Sources said that the new policy also bars any advertisement/hoarding on such buildings which are declared as dangerous/dilapidated/insecure by the KMC’s Building department. The policy emphasises use of eco-friendly biodegradable cloth materials as an alternative to traditionally used PVC flexes in order to reduce pollution.
The KMC has also declared Park Street and Camac Street as ‘Private Hoarding Free Zone’. Several areas in the city were also declared ‘No Advertisement Zone’ such as the entire BBD Bag area starting from Writers’ Building, entire Maidan area, Calcutta High Court, Victoria Memorial Hall, East Kolkata Wetland, among many others.
It was learnt that the new rules also state if the advertising agency desires to prune branches of trees in front of their advertisement for better visibility, a no objection certificate has to be obtained from the Parks and Squares department of KMC which may also recover the scheduled fees for such pruning.