Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Structurally unsafe hoardings raise public concern

Staff Reporter

Thiruvananthapuram: The structural safety of advertisement boards on roadsides and top of buildings have become a matter of public concern. According to the police, many advertisement boards have been put up without the sanction of the authorities.

The structural safety of the boards are highly suspect. The hoardings, fashioned out of wood and metal, are heavy at the top and weak at the base and may collapse in strong wind.

Many such boards have been erected on traffic islands on city roads, impeding the vision of motorists and pedestrians.

There have been instances where ill secured hoardings on top of buildings have collapsed, injuring pedestrians, blocking traffic and snapping power lines.

In 2004, a schoolboy was killed and several others injured at Nemom when a hoarding set atop a building collapsed on a crowd of commuters. A subsequent inquiry by the district administration found that the board had been put up without the permission of the local body.

The struts at the base of the board were sunk into barrels filled with cement. The board had no vents to reduce air resistance. An official of the Fire and Rescue Services said these were the factors that often caused the collapse of advertisement boards during windy days and the rainy season.

Permission

An office-bearer of the Kerala Advertisement Industries Association said that many of the unauthorised advertisements boards in the city were structurally unsafe. (Under section 272 of the Kerala Municipalities Act, no advertisement is allowed without the permission of the concerned local body. However, the rule is observed more in the breach). Those who put up unauthorised boards compromise structural safety for profit by using cheap material for construction, he said. Some of such boards have no proper "props" and are secured using thin metal wires.

The District Collector is empowered to assess the safety of advertisement boards. Ideally, the district administration should identify structurally unsafe boards and remove them from public places.

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