With 78 per cent of outdoor advertising across the City of Johannesburg erected illegally, the municipality has approved a draft bylaw that will see companies facing criminal charges for and allow Metro police to take down all illegal advertising.
According to the MMC for Development Planning’s spokesperson, Poppy Louw, the City loses R1.5 billion in revenue a year that it could have made, if the outdoor advertising followed legal processes.
78% of outdoor adverts in @CityofJoburgZA is illegal #OutdoorAdBylaw @NewsNMT
— Cllr Chantelle Fourie-Shawe (@cfshawe) June 13, 2017
At one of the first public consultation meetings in Berario on 13 June, the City’s outdoor advertising operations manager, Jack Sekgobela, said media companies, communes, estate agents, franchises and private homeowners are frequent transgressors.
It costs the City a lot, he said, to take these matters to court individually. Hence the amendment of the bylaw. The bylaws last saw any change in 2009 with the City trickling behind in lost revenue every year.
Graham De Kock, chairperson of the development planning Section 79 committee, agreed that the City has become irrelevant in the outdoor advertising space. He encouraged people to talk to the City so that a mutually beneficial ground can be established, including for local communities.
Sekgobela said that the proposed bylaw will help with decluttering the City, provide better safety to the public, improve revenue and improve the impact of advertising on road users.
The fines for offences set out in the proposed bylaw will start from R200 per poster to R2 500.
“The purpose of reviewing the current bylaw is to create a platform for the industry to be sustainable and to operate in safety environments through the City,” Sekgobela said.
After the public consultations in June across all seven regions of the City, residents and businesses have until 30 June to submit comments in writing to Alwyn Nortjé at alwynn@joburg.org.za or Jack Sekgobela at jackse@joburg.org.za
Written comments can also be hand-delivered to the Outdoor Advertising Unit located on the 6th floor of the Metro Centre in Braamfontein (158 Loveday Street), from 8am until 3pm, Mondays to Fridays.
The draft bylaw is expected to be finalised in council later this year.
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