Ministry Of Housing circular no 1, 2009 -Guidelines on Outdoor Advertising, is meant to regulate outdoor advertising in this country. Under the new guideline, the safety of the structure, the location and the size of the advertising panel is regulated.
The agencies empowered and entrusted to regulate among others are Public Works Department, Local Authorities and Ministry of Health.
For Ministry Of Federal Territory, they went a step ahead and formulate the guidelines specific for FT. The guideline compliments the guideline done by the Ministry of Housing .
The Star has the story way back in April, read on............
the Star- Mayor wants to wipe out illegal advertising Wednesday April 8,
KUALA Lumpur mayor Datuk Ahmad Fuad Ismail feels that enough is enough and has decided to launch a war against the widespread illegal advertisement nuisance in the federal capital.
Fuad said he would go all out to catch the perpetrators of the abuse by calling up the contact numbers on the illegal advertisements and then book them for vandalism.
He said that the only way to stop the mushrooming of illegal advertisement posters, banners and buntings put up by the ah longs (loan sharks), tuition centres and those offering various services, was to go after the persons sponsoring them.
“Removing the adverts and stickers is no longer a viable solution as the perpetrators keep coming back. Drastic action must be taken to teach the culprits a lesson,” Fuad said.
He said that the Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) enforcement team would be instructed to call up the number directly and find out where they were operating from.
Not right: An advert stuck on a phone booth along Bukit Bintang in Kuala Lumpur.
“I am declaring war on these people as they are giving the city a bad name. They are placing stickers, posters and buntings on road signs, street lights, poles and even on the trees. It is an eyesore,” Fuad said.
He said that among the solutions being explored were to find a non-stick surface preparation technology to prevent people from pasting bills and posters, and getting the people to report on those found sticking them.
“The public can play a role by being our eyes and ears and take down the details of people sticking bills and posters on road signs, street lighting and trees,” he said.
Fuad said that a bigger fine was also needed to curb this rampant act.
He said that there was a need to allocate a place for people to advertise their announcements like the notice boards at the 7-Eleven stores.
“This is not just for notices but even for graffiti. We need to identify locations in the city where people can express their creativity legally,” he said.
According to Fuad, several years ago, the DBKL had tried to track those who put up posters on road signs by calling up the numbers advertised but found that most of the numbers were registered under some other names.
Meanwhile, Fuad is scheduled to meet representatives of the Federal Territories Ministry and officials of the Housing and Local Government Ministry’s Town and Country Planning Department today to finalise a set of guidelines for use as a reference for all billboard applications and approvals for the local authorities nationwide.
According to Fuad, the guidelines are very detailed and have specific rules and regulations.
He said the government felt that the current billboard guidelines were ineffective and that a more systematic scheme was needed to regulate the entire billboard management system in Kuala Lumpur.
Fuad said that advertising companies would be informed of the new rules soon and that those whose billboards were located at approved spots but had failed to follow visual specifications and planning structure would be removed unless they correct the mistakes.
Needless to say, the illegal billboards will be removed.
When contacted, Outdoor Advertising Association (OAM) president Datuk George Frederick said that he had always pushed for a more regulated billboard industry.
Frederick said that he supported the mayor’s move as he found the illegal advertisements in the city to be a menace.
“Any type of advertising should be environmentally friendly and aesthetically pleasing. Those who go about vandalising public property by sticking their bills on them should be hauled to court. Civic punishment should be imposed on them by making them clean up the city and remove all the illegal advertisements,” he said.
Under the new guidelines, billboards within 500m from a traffic light junction will be removed. There are about 1,400 billboards in Kuala Lumpur which generate a yearly revenue of RM12mil.
Last year, the DBKL removed 80,000 illegal billboards, banners, buntings and flyers throughout the city.
It was reported that there are some 134 illegal billboards around Kuala Lumpur and most of them are in the Lembah Pantai constituency.
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