Opinion: We have a right to see the skyline

Dhaka once was a city of mosque. Today it stands as a city of ugly, imposing and all-distracting billboards that block the skyline, undermines minimum aesthetics and occasionally causes fatal accidents.

Authorities claim that they are not responsible for most of the billboards. They put down the number of billboards in the city to be around 3000—of which the two city corporations and other authorities have approved just around 1000.

The remaining 2000 billboards are illegal, according to both city corporations. But their knowing makes no difference—because they do not take any real action against the law violators.

Once in a while when some billboard crashes over some pedestrians—the authorities stage some useless drives to remove a few illegal billboards and then go back to sleep.

Why do they not take any action? Because we know that those who run the illegal billboards have political muscles and they enjoy the blessings of the authorities. These illegal billboard owners are making huge money and part of it is surely used to let them carry out the business.

We all know that the real number of illegal billboards in the city would be many times higher than just 2000. There are hundreds of billboards just by the two sides of the airport road and there are billboards just in the middle of the road. There are billboards on the rooftops on almost all buildings on the main intersections of the city. These are visible and they can be easily taken down if the authorities really want to.

The High Court in 2007 had directed the authorities to pull down the billboards from important parts of the city. Then the billboard advertisers association challenged the decision and it was stayed. And a few years later, the High Court finally vacated the stay—meaning the authorities were free to dismantle all the billboards.

But so far we have not seen any move to carry out the High Court directive.

The city corporations are now saying that they are now formulating an outdoor advertisement policy to make the city “greener and more beautiful”. This policy is expected to be framed within this month, they said.

How can we trust the city corporations or any other authority related to billboard? They are already defying the High Court directives—something unimaginable in any other country—including India. They always claim that they have inadequate manpower to dismantle the billboards. Do they really need manpower to dismantle these billboards? They can simply sue the owners of the illegal billboards and those owners themselves would dismantle their hoardings.

We have a right to see the sky as nature had given it. We have a right to see a clean cityscape. We have a right to drive safely—undisturbed by loud road side visuals.

We know it is possible to carry out the court order.

In Delhi, back in 1997, the Supreme Court had banned all billboards visible to traffic on road on ground that these are disturbance to safe traffic movement. The authorities complied.

A decade later, the Delhi Outdoor Advertisers filed an appeal against this order and the court rejected it saying, “hoarding and/or advertising boards near and facing the roads are traffic hazards.”

In the same year in May 2007, the Municipality of Delhi filed an appeal against the Supreme Court order and submitted a draft policy for outdoor advertisement in the city. The guiding principles of the Outdoor Advertising Policy of Delhi includes:  1. The policy for outdoor advertising is driven, not

by revenue imperatives, but by city development imperatives. Therefore, in its implementation, it will be clear that outdoor hoardings are permitted only if they are not a road safety hazard or if they support the city's public service development and enhance its aesthetics.

2. The policy will explicitly work to discourage visual clutter. This will be done by increasing the space between the billboards and in restricting large billboards to select areas of the city, like its commercial hubs.

3. The policy is designed to ensure that outdoor advertising is not hazardous to traffic. It will assume that there is a significant correlation between road safety and distraction because of roadside billboards, visible to the drivers. This will be done by allowing large size billboards only after significant distance from the traffic junctions and intersections, by providing significant space between the two billboards on roads, by completely banning billboards on pedestrian walkways and in placing billboards at significant distance from the right of way of any road.

4. In addition, large size billboards will be completely banned on major city arterial roads, like the ring road. The list of roads will be decided jointly between the MCD and the traffic police.

Can our city corporation follow these universal principles? They have done it in Delhi. Why can’t we do it in Dhaka?