The election manifesto of Chittagong City Corporation’s (CCC) new mayor AJM Nasir Uddin included a city free from illegal billboards but the crackdown on such boards gradually lost momentum after the mayor’s takeover in late July.
The port city’s different areas have seen regular drives conducted by the city corporation against illegal billboards since early this year but such measures have been very infrequent since the end of July.
The reasons, CCC officials said, are a shortage of manpower and the rainy season.
But CCC sources said removal of illegal billboards had been obstructed by Awami League, Jubo League and Chhatra League leaders in late June.
Some advertising firms meanwhile have used the situation to their advantage, installing new billboards illegally and thus spoiling the city’s beauty.
CCC officials claimed that some billboards had been removed in the meantime but it was found that new ones have also sprung up beside many major roads in areas such as Tigerpass, Lalkhan Bazar, Dewanhat, Agrabad, Bayezid, Halishahar, Patenga, Muradpur, Bahaddarhat and Bakalia.
The city corporation, sources said, is unaware of how many illegal billboards have been put up in the city.
In the past, the CCC mayor, Nasir, said several times that registration for new billboards and renewal of registration for the existing ones were suspended in 2013.
The association of billboard owners and CCC sources said the number of illegal billboards and signboards topped 10,000 after 2013.
According to a 2013 CCC report, 2,019 advertising companies registered to display a total of 6,170 billboards but the city corporation’s revenue department revealed on May 25 that the numbers of legal and illegal billboards in the city are 429 and 1,033 respectively.
The department officials could not come up with an acceptable answer to how the remaining billboards were put up, nor could they explain how registrations were done for displaying legal billboards even though the process was halted in 2013.
At a meeting with law enforcement agencies on May 16, the CCC mayor announced that all illegal billboards and signboards would be taken down. He also directed billboard owners to take their boards down by May 31.
Also on May 25, Nasir, while holding a meeting with CCC revenue and land departments, instructed the city corporation’s Executive Magistrate Nazia Shirin to take down illegal billboards and signboards.
In compliance with his order, 337 illegal billboards and signboards of different sizes were removed between June 1 and July 9 but such drives, CCC officials said, lost pace after that.
CCC Revenue Officer Shamsul Alam said the executive magistrate was given a list of illegal billboards but the magistrate said drives could not be carried out as officials became more busy with other duties.
CCC acting chief revenue official Ahmadul Haque said the department tasked with removing illegal billboards has an acute shortage of manpower that disrupted its functions.
Mayor Nasir’s predecessor M Manjur Alam, a BNP man, strove to take down illegal billboards but CCC officials were harassed by Awami League members, who own most of the boards.
In November last year, Chittagong Metropolitan Police Commissioner Abdul Jalil Mandal, with the help of CCC officials, first initiated crackdowns on illegal billboards in the port city.