Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) has re-launched its campaign to remove illegal hoarding boards from major city centers. The metropolis has already cleared some hoarding boards which were causing visual pollution at some major city roads.
KMC officials said they plan to remove all the horizontal boards which take more space and overlap others out of the unhealthy competition. “Everyone wants these boards at main streets. Hence they pile them up in layers. We are removing all these boards,” said Dhanapati Sapkota, chief of the KMC’s Implementation Department.
The drive against hoarding boards is initiated as per the Advertisement Policy enforced by the KMC last year. In the recent action against the illegal hoarding boards, KMC has cleared all areas in Putalisadak and Bagbazar. “Most of these boards were attached to commercial complexes and houses in the areas.
The boards mostly included advertisements from colleges and education consultancies,” Sapkota said.
The metropolis also plans to remove such hoarding boards from Airport-Tripureshwor , Tripureshwor-Maharajgunj, Kamalppokhari-Gaushala and Dillibazar-Blauwtar road sections.
Sapkota said they will also remove such boards other road sections in the next month.
The Advertisement Tax Directive-2007, prepared by the KMC, does not allow construction of hoarding boards measuring more than 800 square feet but there are billboards as large as 1,600 square feet at various locations in the Kathmandu Valley.
The KMC generates around Rs 15 million in revenue from hoarding boards. The KMC started pulling down hoarding boards from various locations in the city last year after entrepreneurs did not heed its repeated requests to remove them.
According to a survey carried out by the KMC, there were around 653 hoarding boards in the city of which 385 are installed on rooftops. The KMC has also repeatedly asked the hoarding board entrepreneurs to switch to modern technology such as the digital boards.
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