GREEN party leader George Perdikis yesterday applauded a Supreme Court decision that rejected advertisers’ appeals to be spared from complying with a new law to take down or push back their illegal billboards.
In effect, the decision will force the remaining advertisers to remove the billboards or face having them torn down by members of the public works department.
The new legislation regulating billboards was passed over a year ago; they were supposed to have come down last October, but few advertisers complied with the law. Initially, the government held off taking action pending an assessment from the Attorney-general’s office over fears the government could be sued for trespassing if it moved in to tear down offending billboards.
Perdikis, who has been an active advocate of banishing the billboards littering the sides of the island’s roads, said justice had finally been done.
“Those who didn’t implement the law will now have to. We feel justice has been done and that our efforts finally paid off. We went on this fight alone, even when other parties backed out,” he said.
However, he warned the Greens planned to keep a close eye on the situation in all districts, and, although they would initially give the government some leeway, they would eventually take legal action if advertisers continued to violate the law.
“We will give them some time to get organised. Although we consider the owners have already been warned to take down the billboards (last year letters were sent out to all advertisers) and they should have been taken down, we fear the government will go through the whole procedure again and give them a 30-day extension. We estimate the procedure will take a month or two,” he said.
Perdikis added: “We will wait, but as soon as the time is up we will appeal to the Ombudswoman and then take the public works department and the municipalities to court. They do not have a choice about implementing the law. They are obliged to do so. It is their political and legal responsibility.”
Chief Executive Engineer at the public works department Lefteris Stylianides said the court decision had not yet been passed on to their department. “As soon as we get the court’s decision we will read it and implement it. It is to my understanding that we will be able to remove any billboards that have not come down, which we will do if necessary,” he said.
The new legislation restricts the size of billboards in and outside cities and calls for the removal of all billboards less than 40 metres from the highway and three metres from the streets. The provisions also provide that billboards must be at least three kilometres apart on the highway.
