Hyderabad: Advertisement agencies which have been maintaining hoardings, unipoles and billboards, allegedly hand in glove with HMDA officials have not been clearing their dues for eight years.
The municipal authority which covers seven districts has been primarily maintaining hoardings at People’s Plaza, NTR Marg, Imax Road, Lumbini Park, Necklace Road, beneath PVNR Expressway and the 158-kilometre-long outer ring road stretch.
None of these hoardings possess a structural stability certificate and were erected exceeding their parameters. Advertisement wing officials in collusion with agencies have allegedly been swindling the fee from 2010. Sources said that the officials had pocketed Rs 6 crore annually. Surprisingly, higher authorities are clueless about the issue.
According to highly placed sources, the hoarding maintenance has been handled by three wings including the Engineering wing, Buddha Purnima Project (BPP) wing and Urban Forestry. Sources said that none of the higher authorities working in these wings had the details of number of hoardings in their jurisdiction. As a result, lower rung staff, hand in glove with advertisement agencies have been been denting the revenue of HMDA which is dealing with a cash crunch.
The staff has been looting advertisement fee from about 600 hoardings placed beneath the PVNR Expressway which has 328 pillars, about five unipoles around the Hussain Sagar Lake, hoardings at 19 interchanges along ORR stretch, about 200 others hoardings erected at Imax road, People’s Plaza upto Sanjeevaiah Park and others locations.
Sources said that as many as 27 Ad agencies had been maintaining the hoardings rented out by the HMDA. They also said that none of these unipoles and hoardings had structural stability certificates.
A senior HMDA official admitting the loot, said that the department would prepare an action plan to streamline the advertisement wing. He said that the municipal authority would issues notices to the Ad agencies to clear the dues.
“After conducting a thorough inquiry into the issue, the municipal authority would taken action on the Ad agencies which had irregularities. If found guilty, officials will be suspended and Ad agencies will be blacklisted,” the official added.
