The Lusaka City Council (LCC) has directed all outdoor advertising agents in the city to remove politically branded billboards by 26th October, 2018.

The council is concerned that a number of outdoor advertising agents still have politically branded advertisements standing long after the elections.

LCC Public Relations Manager George Sichimba says the Council has also directed outdoor advertising agents to label all their billboards for easy identification by the planning authority.

“The local authority has observed with great concern the increased number of billboards within the city despite several reminders to agents about the need to have their billboards labelled,” he said.

He says this situation has made it difficult and time consuming for the Council to execute its duties as identifying owners of these billboards is a challenge.

“LCC has equally assigned 26th October, 2018 for all affected agents to label their billboards with company names and billboard identification numbers,” Mr. Sichimba said.

He cautions that failure to comply with the directive will result in the removal of billboards as provided for in Condition (iii) of the notification of approval.

He adds that after 26th October, 2018, the Council will embark on a massive removal/cutting of illegal billboards and unlabelled ones will be deemed as such.