FLYPOSTING fugitives are set to come unstuck by their money-making unsightly antics and face immediate legal action from the authorities.
The contact telephone numbers and email addresses they leave behind will be followed up by investigators and those responsible will face fines and have to pay the price of the sticky dilemma they leave behind.
The aim is to stop private homes and public properties from being covered in advertisements offering services and products, such as ‘rooms for rent’.
The Capital Trustees Board, at its meeting yesterday at the Municipalities Affairs and Agriculture Ministry headquarters in Manama, urged government officials to refer all offenders to the Public Prosecution.
Board chairman Saleh Tarradah stressed a need for tough action against the eyesore makers following a mushrooming of glued flyers across the Capital Governorate and other parts of the country.
“There has to be a joint government collaborative effort to end the eyesores, whether from municipal officials, the police or other civil authorities,” he said.
“Nowadays, posting notices can be carried out in a much more civilised manner, such as using social media which is the same but without glue being used to cover up our walls!
“What’s currently happening is unacceptable. It’s just ugly and unclean.”
Capital Trustees Authority director-general and acting Southern Municipal Council director-general Mohammed Al Sehli said cleaners remove glued notices on a regular basis and advertised numbers featured on them were contacted.
“We removed a massive number of glued adverts prior to the Pope’s visit in November last year. Large teams worked non-stop cleaning the walls using paint scrapers,” he said.
“The problem stopped for a few days, maybe out of religious respect or simply because we had inspectors working round the clock, but recently these offenders appear to have gone on a rampage of pasting posters.”
The board’s services and public utilities committee chairwoman Huda Sultan said that it was hard to clean up the stains leftover by the removed advertisements.
“They are an eyesore and so are the bits left following their removal,” she said.
“I don’t think that current punishments or fines are enough or else the problem wouldn’t resurface continuously, especially in expat-dominated areas such as Gudaibiya.
“Tough legal action needs to be taken against offenders so they and others learn clean advertising methods.”
The board’s financial, administrative and legislative committee chairman Mohammed Al Abbas described the problem as ‘irritating’ and despite periodically being tackled returns with a vengeance.
“In many cases new adverts are glued on top of old ones and it just makes the whole thing worse as cleaners try to peel them off without scratching or damaging the properties – this is why we need tough action now.”
mohammed@gdnmedia.bh
&uuid=(email))