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| All over the city, hundreds of similar billboards present a high risk of collapse as their entire weight is supported by a single pole. |
Bogra Sangbad Desk : Several thousand risky billboards and signposts set up legally and illegally across the capital pose a constant death threat to the city dwellers, in the absence of an effective oversight by the city authorities to ensure public safety.
On Sunday, one such gigantic unipole billboard collapsed at Shapla Chattar in the city's commercial hub of Motijheel, injuring a student and damaging a rickshaw. Simply by a stroke of luck, no one was killed in the ever crowded roundabout.
“In theory, the City Corporation is responsible for ensuring technical stability of such huge metal structures with its regulatory process.
But in practice, there is no mechanism to do this,” said a top official of Dhaka South City Corporation, wishing anonymity.
The city corporation's planning and the
engineering departments are officially tasked with the job. But again, in practice either the waste management, estate or the revenue department is at the helm of running the technical affairs, leaving the issue of public safety at the mercy of God, he said.
The City Corporation Policy on billboard installation and Bangladesh National Building Code clearly provide technical specification of setting up billboards. But there is no effort by the city authorities to ensure safety.
At the time of installation of billboards, city officials are supposed to remain present to make sure that they were built as per the approved design. Also, officials must ensure that the billboards are set up at the approved locations.
“But instead of doing this, a powerful clique of the management committee officials in connivance with ruling party thugs has been interested in facilitating illegal billboard business,” the official said.
BM Enamul Haque, chief executive officer and head of billboards management committee of Dhaka North City Corporation, said the number of illegal billboards was many times that of the approved ones.
“These billboards set up outrageously all across the city are ugly for the cityscape … and a death trap [for the people],” he said.
“Various government departments, cantonment board, police, roads and highways department, civil aviation authority, among others, have illegally rented out their land for hundreds of billboards,” Enamul added.
Under the Taxation Rules, the city corporation is the authority to approve and regulate billboards within its jurisdiction and any other authority or private individual has to pay fees to it and obtain prior permission for installing billboards.
Asked why they do not take legal actions against the law breakers, he said, “We are trying.”
As to whether they ensure safety compliance of billboards installed here and there, he said, “I have to check.”
Deaths and damage of property due to collapse of poorly mounted billboards have been in the news for quite some time.
On March 15, 2009, two people were killed and eight others injured when a loosely erected hoarding atop the Gulshan Shopping Centre at Gulshan-1 collapsed.
Another person was crushed under a billboard near Shahjalal International Airport on May 6 the same year.
A number of illegal billboards at a filling station on Kuril Biswa Road gave way and killed two people on June 16, 2006.
In April this year, a gigantic hoarding collapsed on several vehicles near Dhaka Club during a nor'wester, leaving the car of lawmaker Haji Salim, a police van, three minibuses and several rickshaws damaged and two rickshaw pullers wounded.
Sirajul Islam, chief town planner of Dhaka South City Corporation, said any billboard mounted obstructing the footpath in any way was illegal.
Billboards installed haphazardly obstructing the skyline are not permissible either, he said.
Chief executive officer of Dhaka South City Corporation Ansar Ali Khan said they were soon going for an auction to get unipole billboards dismantled and later they would remove hoardings on private land.
In Dhaka south, there are 476 approved hoardings, 176 of them unipoles. There are also 316 mega signs in the area.
Different organisations like Bangladesh Railway, Police, Dhaka Wasa, Jatiya Krira Parishad and BIWTA have set up 527 billboards. Of them, only 119 have permission, said a DSCC official.
There are about 900 legal billboards against some 1,500 illegal ones. Of the illegal ones, 527 are privately owned.
Yousuf Ali Sardar, deputy chief revenue officer, kept mum when asked about how safety of a billboard is ensured after approval.
Dhaka north has about 1,500 approved billboards against some 1,200 illegal ones. Of those illegal, 257 were permitted by the cantonment board, 173 by the air force, 147 by the railway, 10 by Wasa and 22 by police, while 443 are owned by private individuals, said a city official.
An HC bench in April 2010 asked the Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) and Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) to immediately knock down all unauthorised billboards on streets and rooftops.
None of the authorities, however, removed any rooftop billboard.
The exact number is hard to get, but a Rajuk estimate puts rooftop billboard at over 4,000.
Source : The Daily Star
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