Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Capital Development Authority’s (CDA) Municipal Administration Directorate has not been paid any fee for banners displayed alongside roads to support Nawaz Sharif.

An extensive outdoor advertisement campaign has been carried out by the by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in favour of the ousted PM all the way from D-Chowk to Faizabad Interchange.

The campaign includes streamers, hoardings and bridgeboards containing pictures of the disqualified PM and other party leaders with slogans like ‘Awam Ka Wazeer-e-Azam-Nawaz Sharif’, ‘Nawaz Sharif Qadam Barhao- Ham Tumary Sath Hain”.

Ironically, the whole campaign has been managed without paying a single penny to the CDA, which is otherwise mandatory for such outdoor advertisements under the Islamabad Control of Advertisement Regulations 1977.

Sources inside the Directorate of Municipal Administration (DMA) confirmed that no payment had been made by parliamentarians or their representative for the outdoor advertisement, which had caused a loss of millions of rupees to the public exchequer.

“In routine, the DMA officials remove any banner or streamer displayed without the prior approval and payment to the authority. However, these were not removed as our Director Ali Sufyan instructed us to ignore them,” an employee of the authority said requesting anonymity.

“Our director also forced the advertising agencies to display PML-N’s hoardings with the name of Mayor of Islamabad Shaikh Ansar Aziz free of cost,” he said.

Sufyan remained unavailable for comments despite repeated attempts.

When contacted, Metropolitan Corporation Chief Asad Mehboob Kiani said: “I have no information about the issue. Usually, such matters are dealt by the DMA director. However, if the campaign has been run without approval and paying any fee, then it is quite unfortunate.”

Published in Daily Times, August 11^th 2017.