Rusted hoarding structures in Srinagar city threat to people’s lives

Zia Darakshan

Srinagar, Mar 27: Dilapidated and damaged hoarding structures hanging dangerously at various places in the Srinagar city are posing life threat to people. A cross-section of citizens has expressed their resentment against the Srinagar municipal corporation for shabby hoarding structures, causing a lot of inconvenience to the general public. These sites have been without maintenance for years together in contravention to the rules governing public convenience on the roads.

Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) has come under sharp criticism for its lackadaisical attitude. This time, the public outcry is against the damaged and dilapidated condition of hoarding structures across the Srinagar city that are a threat to the safety of the pedestrians and the general public.
Last year in April, Ministry of Housing & Public Affairs released the list of cities with a million plus population for ‘Ease of Living Index 2020’ and the Srinagar city has been ranked at the bottom of the list among 49 cities. While reacting to the poor rating in the ‘Ease of Living Index 20202, the concerned UT authorities claimed that many projects, including smart city projects have been already taken up to restore as well as enhance the beauty of the Srinagar city, besides, improving the ease of living standard of its population.

According to a group of civil society members, “While Srinagar city has been selected as one of the pilot smart cities and various works are being taken up under the project for the development and beautification of the city, the hoarding structures for outdoor advertising across the city are shabby and giving the city an ugly look. In fact, most of the hoarding structures are rusted, broken, and hanging dangerously, posing a potential threat to the general public, especially pedestrians.”

”Srinagar city is dotted with crumbling and ugly iron frames of hoardings, which pose a direct threat to traffic safety and to the general public walking along footpaths or standing below these dangerous structures,”they said.
There has been an urgent demand from the members of the public to the SMC to ensure proper placement of hoarding structures across the Srinagar city and renovate those structures which are potential threat to the life of the general public. It’s worth mentioning that a good number of such gigantic structures are decades old without maintenance and are in life-threatening conditions.
A Srinagar Municipal Corporate official on the condition of anonymity told this correspondent that usually outdoor advertising agencies are allotted hoarding sites on lease by the municipal corporations throughout India and same procedure has been adopted by the SMC under its by-laws. Recently, the SMC has floated the tenders for allotment of contract for displaying advertising hoarding in the Srinagar City. One of the local advertising agencies has qualified the tender.
Since the SMC has finalized the vendor, it’s the right time for the corporation to review the hoarding sites, especially in terms of the structure and location. A traders association member, while commenting on the issue, said, “The SMC should ensure good site management and raise the safe structures so that safety of general public is not compromised. SMC has a legal obligation to recognize the potential vulnerability and to take reasonable practical steps to ensure the safety of pedestrians and the traffic.”
It is notable that SMC has more than a hundred hoarding structures in the city in which large number of such structures have been erected years back and are without maintenance for many years. This not only gives unpleasant look as far as beautification of the city is concerned, but also acts as a potential threat to the life of pedestrians walking along the footpaths and to the traffic safety also.
The reporter spotted a large number of such hoarding structures in dilapidated conditions near Hari Singh High Street, Exchange Road, Dalgate, Batamaloo, Hyderpora, Karan Nagar which are known places for their footfall and traffic.
“Accidents are inevitable at any time, if the structures are not immediately maintained and renovated. Effective management of any system depends on anticipating and identifying the problems and risks as they arise and delivering specific measures at the precise time and points where they are needed,” said spokesman of High Court Bar Association, Srinagar, Advocate G. N. Shaheen.
The spokesman said that if the Srinagar City remains with the present shabby and crumbling hoarding structures which put life of pedestrians in danger, we will file a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) before the Hon’ble High Court at Srinagar against the existing outlook of the hoarding site management.
Meanwhile, the SMC authorities assured that they will provide a good site management for the beautification of the city and safety of the pedestrians and the general public will be given prime importance while allotting the tender to the qualified vendor. “Being a reasonable body, it has been the precedence of the Corporation that the qualified vendor is given reasonable time-frame for the renovation and the repairment of the sites before the start of the allotment period of the contract,” said the SMC officials.