BILLBOARDS could be banished to 100 metres from motorways if a government bill on the issue is adopted.
Parliament yesterday got the ball rolling on the legislation to regulate advertising hoardings, which have mushroomed in recent months to litter the island’s roadsides and which police describe as a safety hazard.
The government bill was yesterday discussed in a joint meeting of the House Communication and Interior Affairs Committees.
The Publishers’ Association yesterday joined the fray over the issue, accusing the giant billboards of sapping advertising revenue.
The Chairman of the Association, Anthos Lycavgis, said the unregulated installation of billboards was tantamount to “looting the basic lifeblood of the press and the mass media in general”.
Lycavgis described the billboards as “press killers” because they operated arbitrarily and without limitats.
“The press, if nothing else, offers a social service, in which they were supported by advertising, while billboards merely acted as a money-makers for those who owned them,” Lycavgis said.
He added: “We do not demand their abolition; that would be foolish; but they should be put on a rational basis and under strict conditions.”
Communications Minister Averoff Neophytou revealed that around 300 billboards had been planted in the past 10 months and cited a study carried out in Greece that found that 12 per cent of serious accidents happened because drivers were distracted by billboards.
Neophytou wondered if drivers could keep their eyes on the road when they saw a billboard advertising women’s underwear.
Roads had become an advertising dumpsite, the minister said, adding that roads and pavements worth millions were completed on one day and dug up on the next without permission by advertisers who wanted to erect billboards, the minister said.
The Chairman of the Committee, Nicos Pittokopitis, said there was no evidence linking accidents with billboards, a fact admitted by the Deputy Chief of Traffic Police Andreas Paphitis, who added, however, that some accidents were in fact connected.
Strovolos Mayor Savvas Eliofotou agreed that the matter should be regulated but argued that the municipalities should be in charge and not the state.
Municipalities currently rake in hundreds of thousands of pounds of profit by providing permission to advertising companies to plant their hoardings within their boundaries.
Neophytou suggested that local authorities could be shutting their eyes to the problems, provoking an angry reaction from Eliofotou, who wondered if the government’s eyes were open.
Another group that has made a lot from billboards – the landowner’s association – came out in support of the status quo, arguing that the proposed legislation would eradicate outdoor advertisers to the benefit of the mass media.
The bill provides that billboards could not be erected closer that 100 metres from the boundaries of the motorway and 75 metres from a roundabout.
In residential areas, billboards would have to be placed at a distance of at least 20 metres from the traffic lights or the roadside.
The bill also includes strict penalties for violators, who would initially be given a 30-day warning to remove their billboard: if they refused to do so it would be torn down at the owner’s expense.
If any billboards are within the prohibited boundaries and obstruct visibility or are a safety hazard, they will be pulled down by the authorities after consultation with the chief of police or the director of the public works department.
The Ministry of Communications would oversee the implementation of the law and have the power to refer to the Attorney-general any cases where local authorities fail to take the necessary actions.
The penalties stipulated by the proposed legislation are a prison term of up to 24 months or a fine of up to £4,000 or both.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
