THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Soon, the city is set to sport a new look, all rid of the illegal flex boards. The city corporation has intensified its drive of removing all the illegal flex boards in the city, based on the Kerala High Court's order the other day.
In the last two days, the corporation has removed more than 900 flex boards from the city. The civic body hopes to intensify its raid and rid the city of the illegal flex boards and will levy fines and charge criminal case against violators.
“Over the past two days, more than 960 flex boards have been removed. And we will be filing police cases against the violators and slapping fines on them as well,” says Deputy Mayor Rakhi Ravikumar. Even after banning flex boards in certain stretches in the city, the boards continue to be kept by the advertisers. “For instance, hoardings have been banned in the Kowdiar- East Fort stretch but still people continue to place them. Ever since the High Court's directive last year, we have been removing the illegal flex boards and slapping fines on them,” she says. Ever since the High Court directed the civic bodies regarding this last year, over 18,000 flex boards have been removed from the city. An amount of H 6.87 lakhs was collected as part of this, Rakhi said.
The crackdown began on Wednesday and seven teams have been deployed for this. “In the past two days, the boards were removed from the main stretches in the city. Although we removed many hoardings in the stretch between Thampanoor and the Secretariat, they are being replaced with other hoardings,” says Vincent E, the revenue officer and the nodal officer assigned towards this end.
The Kerala High Court had issued an order to the local bodies to remove all the illegal flex boards, hoardings and advertisement materials erected at public places within 10 days. According to the order, the flex boards and advertisement materials so removed need to be given to the defaulters and that its disposal should not be through the public system. “Since most of the hoardings have been erected by political parties, there is a practical difficulty in asking them to take it back. We are currently depending on a Bangalore based company for its disposal,” says Vincent.
A large percentage of the flex boards are illegal, says Vincent. “For the license, they will have to follow a set of guidelines. It shouldn't obstruct pedestrian movement, there are stretches where hoardings are banned. So people keep it without taking the corporation's license. All such hoardings will be removed,” he says.
the flex board menace
“We are dealing with PVC flexes here. We discuss the ugliness of these hoardings but chose to forget the environmental implications. If you ask which is the most toxic plastic in the world, it is the PVC,” says Shibu K N, programme director, Thanal. "From the production process and up till the transportation, and its disintegration, it has huge environmental implications. We are staring at health impacts over generations. Across the world, there is movement to ban PVC which is a carcinogen. A flex serves its purpose for a month, mostly. Since the flexes are kept in sun, chemicals are added to ensure that they don't fade, including the addition of brominated flame retardants. All these chemicals are leached into the environment when it is kept under the sun," he says. PVC flexes cannot be recycled. "Proper recycling is not happening and PVC flexes are getting burnt. Burning it is even more toxic, with the releasing of dioxins and other chemicals," he said.
Activities to be monitored
The district administration is also keeping a tab on the flexes and taking steps to ensure it does not mushroom in the district. “We are going to issue an order soon regarding this. We plan to monitor the activities on a daily basis,” said K Vasuki, Collector. "We are discouraging the use of flexes during the elections and have appealed to the political parties. Nowadays, a new material has come up which is worse than flexes. It is called the Korean cloth, but it is not cloth and people are being fooled into using this,” she adds.