May 24, 2008	Saturday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 18, 1429

KARACHI, May 23: Despite the havoc wreaked by the precariously installed giant hoardings in the wake of last year’s heavy rains and storm in the city, the relevant civic bodies have yet to evolve a mechanism to check structurally weak hoardings while monsoon is just round the corner.

Memories of the last monsoon are fresh in the minds of Karachiites as over a hundred hoardings fell in various areas controlled by different authorities resulting in a loss of precious lives and properties.

According to unofficial statistics, currently there are around 1,500 hoardings installed either on land sites or on the rooftops of multi-storey residential and commercial buildings. Permission to install such hoardings is being issued by all the land controlling authorities in the city including the city government, cantonment boards, the Karachi Port Trust, the Defence Housing Authority, etc.

Hoardings serve as an important source of revenue for all the land controlling authorities but it is quite unfortunate that these bodies, bickering most of the time over their areas of jurisdiction, seem indifferent towards the crucial issue of public safety.

Instead of coming up with a proper mechanism to monitor these giant iron structures installed in almost nook and corner of the city, these civic authorities are merely relying on a stability certificate to be submitted by an advertiser at the time of the installation of a signboard.

An advertisement of the local taxes department of the city government could be termed a glaring example of the indifferent attitude of the powers that be as it has merely relied on warning the advertisers of strict legal action in case any of their hoardings collapse during the arriving monsoon. One may ask why allow such an incident is being allowed to take place in the very first place.

“The total number of registered hoardings in areas controlled by the city government is 550 including 200 on rooftops,” said District Officer Rehan Khan. “With such a small number of hoardings, we can safely ensure stability of their structures before the monsoon.”

The CDGK official said that under the city government’s bylaws, an advertiser was required to submit a stability certificate issued by a consultant registered with the Karachi Building Control Authority (KBCA).

However, the existence of giant hoardings on rooftops posed a direct threat not only to the safety of the inhabitants of such buildings but also to the pedestrians and commuters.

It is interesting to note that the Cantonment Boards do not allow installation of any billboard on rooftops under their new bylaws but the city government is allowing advertisers to erect signboards atop residential and commercial buildings.

“We do not allow any advertiser to erect hoardings on rooftop of any residential or commercial building,” said Zeenat Ahmed, the chief executive officer of Clifton Cantonment Board. “It is the city government which allows advertisers to erect billboards on rooftops,” she charged.

She said that still there were a few hoardings installed on rooftops in the jurisdiction of the CCB because the advertisers concerned had obtained stay orders from court. “But we do not allow them to put skin on such hoardings,” she added.

Ms Ahmed said that every advertiser registered with the CCB had to submit his signboard’s stability certificate issued from the National Engineering Services Pakistan (Nespak).

The district officer, Rehan Khan, claimed that a six-member committee comprising representatives of the advertising associations and two officials of the city government’s local taxes department were randomly visiting sites of the hoardings to check their structural stability.

However, sources in the city government told Dawn that no such exercise had ever been carried out by the CDGK.