Financial Times

Billboards face blank future
By Chaturi Dissanayake
Fancy walking down Bauddhaloka Mawatha, Horton Place or Galle Face Centre Road without all those huge hoardings or massive billboards staring in your face and pleading for your attention?

That’s the future if the Colombo Municipality has its way or depending on how a court of law looks at it. Under fresh guidelines issued last January on hoardings, about 200 of the 400 to 500 hoardings that adorn the city are unauthorised and must be pulled down.

Municipal Commissioner Dr. Jayantha Liyanage said there is a dispute over 150 hoardings whose two owner-outdoor advertising agencies have taken the municipality to the District Court saying the guidelines violate their right to business.

Separately seven other companies have obtained leave to appeal from the Supreme Court on a similar issue and the case is to be heard in May.
Dr. Liyanage said the guidelines once properly implemented would substantially reduce the number of hoardings in Colombo. Under the new guidelines the municipality has banned hoardings on Independence Mawatha, Bauddhaloka Mawatha, Ananda Kumaraswamy Mawatha, Horton Place, Castle Street, Galle Face Centre Road and along Viharamadevi Park.

It also limits the display of advertisements in front of buildings of national importance, monuments and traffic lights. Dr. Liyanage said the authorities decided to streamline advertising in the city after they received complaints from residents and pedestrians in the area about how it obstructed public life.
An ad industry source said that the main roads where hoardings are to be banned are the main traffic areas where their clients want billboards displayed. Any ban would affect the business of these outdoor agencies.

He also highlighted the fact that unlike in other countries where the advertisers could move to another major city, in Sri Lanka there is only one big city – Colombo.

Dr. Liyanage also acknowledged that advertising on these roads are in high demand and the municipality will be losing revenue as well. Yet he said the guidelines will be implemented as there is a need for the whole process to be streamlined.

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