We’ve been stripped, complain billboard advertisers
KARACHI: As expected, billboard advertisers have complained that their business has been severely set back by the city government’s decision to remove the iron and panaflex sheets from the structures after the deaths they caused during the monsoon storms.
Advertisers have not been happy. “Due to the city government’s decision to remove the skin sheets, the entire industry has collapsed,” said advertiser Syed Owais Naqvi. He claimed that more than 200 advertisers in the city were involved in this part of the business. He complained that people had also been stealing the iron and panaflex sheets that were left over after the advertisers and the city government removed others. “Besides the panaflex material, around six heavy 25KVA generators worth Rs 5 million installed at different major thoroughfares, including Shahrah-e-Faisal, University Road, Rashid Minhas Road, were stolen,” he said.
Now companies are avoiding billboards. “Almost every advertiser in the city has been deprived of millions of rupees as the new contracts to be signed this month have not been fulfilled,” Naqvi added.
Aside from the advertising companies, the staff who work for them have also apparently suffered. Another advertiser who owns a couple of sites in North Nazimabad told Daily Times the fabricator staff (responsible for installing and maintaining the billboards) as well as hundred of workers at printing presses have no work.
There are at least 50 printing presses across the city that were installed in the last two to three years. “The owners of printing presses imported printing machines from China, Taiwan and Australia to produce the huge panaflex sheets,” the advertiser said. Production has come to a grinding halt.
The city nazim had ordered that all billboards be removed in the city limits. Billboards have mostly been removed along Shahrah-e-Faisal.
“No other civic agency has done anything,” said District Officer Local Taxes Rehan Khan while referring to the cantonment boards, Civil Aviation Authority, Pakistan Railways and Pakistan Navy amongst others.
There are about 370 billboards in CDGK limits and more than 2,000 were removed in 2005 on the president’s directions after he noted that the made the city ugly.
Source: Daily Times
Date:7/11/2007
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