Billboards are here to stay
RAWALPINDI – Despite tall claims of City District Government and Cantonment authorities to scale down the size of huge billboards hovering all over the city posing serious threat to life and property of the people.
Taking serious notice of the situation Corps Commander Rawalpindi had called a meeting of both the heads of City District Government and Cantonments a month ago and the matter of billboards came under discussion. It was decided that these huge billboards would be brought under some symmetry in consultation with the advertisers to minimize the threats associated with these huge metal structures in the city.
It was further decided in the meeting that a uniform size would be introduced for commercial hoardings in the city and cantonment limits so that the threat of damage in case of wild windstorms in the month of July and August would be minimized.
After the meeting it was announced that both the management of City District Government and Cantonments would come up with some policy in consultation with the advertisers and would introduce some uniform size of the billboards in both Rawalpindi City and Cantonments limits. It was further announced that the main focus of the authorities would be on the huge billboards installed on the rooftop of buildings that were more vulnerable to windstorms.
But contrary to their claims the civic bodies had failed to come up with concrete steps in this regard as the huge billboards both in city and cantonment limits were neither removed nor scaled down and concerned officials were keeping silence over the situation.
The official sources in City District Government informed that huge money is involved in the business and above all the billboard owners were quite influential so nothing would going to be done in this connection. It was further informed that City District Government had just asked the owners of these billboards to furnish the fitness certificates about the strength of the buildings on which these billboards were installed and everybody know that getting the certificates from engineers is not a big deal here.
Meanwhile the threat being posed by these monstrous billboards in the face of wild windstorms was still there and these billboards could result into a big disaster.
When contacted the Director General Pakistan Metrological Department Dr Qamaruz Zaman Chaudhry informed that the windstorms in this area was not new and it used to hit the area in the month of July and August. He however admitted that the intensity of these storms had increased over the past few years and attributed it to the overall global climatic change.
He further said that windstorms with the intensity of around 150 kilometre could hit the region in coming days.
To a question he said that in West the huge billboards were technically built so that the windstorm had minimum pressure on it and in case of fast wind some windows in the board automatically open to release the pressure.
But in Pakistan most of these billboards were built by ordinary welders and no technical engineering was applied which made them even more vulnerable in the face of fast winds.
In the past a number of billboards in the city and cantonment limits were raised to ground by the fat winds and had also caused some damage to property but if the practice of erecting huge billboards was not checked strictly.
Source: The Nation
Date:7/17/2007
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