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City Council to audit unauthorized billboards and other signage
The Georgetown Council is concerned about loss of revenue due to the erection of unauthorized billboards across the city.
…as Councillors bemoan loss of revenue
Kaieteur News – The Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC) has expressed its concerns over the purported loss of revenue due to the erection of unauthorized billboards throughout the city.
The issue was raised by members of the Council at a statutory meeting held on Monday. During the meeting, City Councillors, Lelon Saul and Clayton Hinds expressed grave concern about the number of unlicensed billboards, banners, and posters erected around the City.
Further, the City Council is particularly concerned about the utilisation of City spaces without its consent and the disregarding of the current protocol to carry out such activities.
The councillors highlighted the fact that the municipality has not been able to collect revenues from the businesses utilizing billboards to advertise their businesses and services.
Expressing his frustration, Saul noted that an investigation is necessary to ascertain how many businesses have billboards and how many of them have authorization from the city and are paying their dues.
“Every day, billboards are going up around the city and nobody seems to know or seems to know or see anything,” Saul asserted.
He told the Council that in his view, the City Engineer’s Department has not been managing the issue properly.
“This has been going for years now and the Engineer’s Department has not given us any information on this. I think it is time that they answer us…How much money are we collecting? I don’t know if they can even say …” the visibly frustrated Saul said.
Councillor Hinds raised concerns about the legitimacy of the billboards.
“We don’t even who is operating with permission and who is not… We currently have applications from a company called Pixels but we don’t know much about this company except that they would help erect some billboards for the Guyana Police Force.”
Hinds also pointed to the number of electronic billboards being installed across the city and the revenue that should be garnered from it.
“We don’t know whether we have been receiving any payments for these electronic billboards,” the Councillor said.
In response to the questions raised by the councillors, Town Clerk Candace Nelson informed the Council that a meeting has been held with a popular printing company to in relation to outstanding payments.
“A meeting was held and Mr. Neal Sukhlal of Impressions was asked to submit the list for his billboards and that was subsequently submitted to me and also we spoke of the payments that are outstanding. He did say that he has a payment plan in place… So we are working to address this issue,” the Town Clerk disclosed.
The Town Clerk said too that as part of the plan, the Council has reached out to the Ministry of Public Works for guidelines on how to deal with the issue of billboards in the city.
Meanwhile, City Mayor Alfred Mentore called on the City Engineer’s Department to begin an audit “to determine the number of signs erected, the nature of the information, duration of publication and persons responsible for erecting the signs”.
He directed officials of the City Engineer’s Department to establish an inventory of the billboards and report to the Council within one week.
“With reference to the ‘Municipal and Districts Councils Act’ Chapter 28:01, part VIII, Section 239 which says “A council may let any land which it possesses,” the Council strongly believes that they possess this authority. According to the ‘Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission Act 1999’ Part II: 4.1, the function of the commission is; (A) “to have charge of and act as guardian over all public lands, rivers and creeks of Guyana,” the City official stated.
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