Outdoor policy for Thiruvananthapuram coming up

The Kerala Government Secretariat has reportedly initiated action to develop an outdoor advertising policy for Thiruvananthapuram to rid the city of unregulated hoardings and arches. Various departments of the Secretariat are gathering information on the current outdoor advertising practices in the city, which will serve as inputs for the new policy. A national daily report suggests that the Secretariat is looking to pattern the policy on the lines of the outdoor advertisement policy developed by Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD).

Once the policy is adopted and enforced, permissions to put up outdoor advertisements in Thiruvananthapuram will be governed wholly by the provisions of the policy.

The policy will likely include categorisation and shape of hoardings, norms governing use of colour, lighting and luminance of outdoor media, etc. To ensure maximum safety of people on the streets, the policy will lay stringent norms on the capacity of the media units to withstand the force of wind, soil bearing capacity where the units are put up, and use of electrical connections for lighting up hoardings.