Nairobi County government has been collecting around Ksh700 Million annually as fees for billboards but an audit uncovered ongoing fraud making the county to miss the potential of over Ksh2 Billion.
City Hall has hence launched a campaign to pull down the illegally erected billboards in areas of the city and its environs.
The focus is not only specific to the billboards but also other unapproved outdoor advertising structures erected for commercial purposes.
The exercise will take place in a period of around six weeks and will be spearheaded by officials from the Lands and Urban Planning department.
On Monday, a number of unlicensed billboards in areas including Waiyaki Way were pulled down by county government officers.
Nairobi County’s chief executive of Lands and Urban Planning department, Charles Kerich, informed that only around 15 per cent of the different 48 registered outdoor advertising companies in the county were compliant with the Nairobi City County Outdoor Advertising Act, 2018.
The remaining 85 per cent of the companies which were noncompliant engaged unscrupulous business practices, especially, making deals with owners of the land they intend to erect the structures without any knowledge of the county government hence evading payment of fees due to the local government.
Kerich indicated that this, therefore, led to situations of the clutter of billboards seen along major city roads.
He also informed that the worst affected city roads and areas included Thika Superhighway, Lang’ata, Waiyaki Way, Mombasa, and Ngong roads.
“No one shall erect any advertising structure within the county without first seeking and being granted approval by the county government. It is not possible to have a scenario where there is a rampant disregard of the law. If you have more billboards than clients then remove the unused ones,” warned Kerich.
As a function of the campaign, all billboards and other advertising structure owners will now be required to declare to the county government the exact number of their structures and the monthly occupancy schedules. They will also ensure to settle their dues to the county by the 10th of every month.
“Any failure to do so amounts to an attempt to conceal information for the purposes of evading to pay county taxes which it relies upon to finance much-needed services,” asserted Kerich.
