Removal of illegal hoardings may be outsourced

The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is contemplating outsourcing removal of 900-odd illegal hoardings in the City.

A recent survey by the Palike showed that there are more than 900 illegal hoardings. Some corporators, however, rubbish the figures and say that there are about 2,000 of them.

A few months ago, the BBMP Council had passed a resolution to remove illegal hoardings from the City. It was also decided that the work could be entrusted to private firms, which can do the job without charging anything to the Palike.

After the resolution, directions were issued to the zonal level BBMP offices to carry out the drive against such display boards.

Opposition

However, the Palike had to confront with a lot of resistance whenever it decided to implement the resolution passed by the council. The opposition was coming mainly from advertisement mafia who are hand in glove with some local politicians, said a Palike officer, requesting anonymity. At some places, the officer said, the Palike team was not allowed to count the number of illegal hoardings let alone remove them.

“We have some data about illegal hoardings in seven out of eight zones of the Palike, but we could not get any figures about the unauthorised hoardings in Dasarahalli zone,” he said. The officer added that three days ago, the civic agency once again started the drive in the core Bangalore area comprising three BBMP zones of east, west and south, and the result was quite discouraging. Out of 300-odd unauthorised hoardings, only ten could be removed including three in the south zone.

Palike is now exploring the possibility of outsourcing the job to private firms. This decision is meant to bring down resistance and save the Palike officers from abuses and threat besides saving money on removing huge steel structures.

The firm engaged in removing the hoarding will be paid half the penalty collected from the ad company besides a share in the sale of steel.