Authorities at the City of Kigali have ordered advertisers to pull down billboards, evoking a three-year old policy which provides guidelines on erecting billboards in the capital. The policy, among others, sets parameters on the spacing between one billboard and another, it also requires owners of these billboards to bid for demarcated streets, a directive that owners of the billboards say is unfair. This implies that all the existing billboards will have to be pulled down before a tender is issued to ensure advertising agencies bid for allocated routes on which they want to set up their billboards. Speaking to The New Times, Jean Claude Rurangwa, the Public Transport and Traffic Management expert at the City of Kigali, said this move is aimed at reducing un planned billboards and signposts within the city. “We want to put these billboards and signposts in order as we did for the transport sector. There is a lot of disorder at the moment. Every advertising company wants to put billboards wherever they want simply because they found a client in that area, and some actually end up obstructing proper view,” said Rurangwa. He said because of disorder and lack of proper monitoring, you find a certain entity with a signpost and when they close or move to another area, the sign post remains which ends up confusing the public. Advertisers, who did not want to be named, claiming that they are working on a collective response to the city directive, said this policy is detrimental to their business. “How are we going to manage this new policy? Some of our clients want to appear on more than one road. How many roads are we going to have to bid for? I think the best thing would have been to consult us first before implementing such a policy,” said a businessman whose company owns several billboards around Kigali. However, Rurangwa, maintained that this is not a new policy; it was adopted three years ago and that the advertisers knew about it, but were reluctant to implement. He said the billboard owners ought to consider what is good for the public as much as they also have to think about their personal interests. “They should be aware of the policy because it has been there since 2013 and it is their responsibility to know it. We cannot stop putting things in order for the public interest simply because it affects some individuals,” Rurangwa says. editorial@newtimes.co.rw
