The National Road Safety Authority has warned that it will take legal action against assemblies that permit billboards on road medians.
The caution follows a clearance exercise in the Ayawaso West Municipality on Tuesday, where the Authority removed several illegal structures it says obstructed motorists’ vision and heightened the risk of crashes and pedestrian knockdowns.
Acting Director-General, Abraham Amaliba, explained that, despite repeated notices, assemblies failed to remove the billboards, prompting the Authority to step in.
He added that advertisers will be made to pay administrative costs before reclaiming their signboards, while unclaimed ones will be auctioned.
“We are hearing from the advertisers that it is the assembly that allows them to mount these billboards. Any assembly that allows for the erection of a billboard, we are going to sue the assembly for engaging in an unlawful act.
“We have written to the assemblies to remove these billboards; they have failed to remove them, so we have taken it upon ourselves to remove them.
“We are going to keep them; we will send notices out for them to claim them. The law says that when we remove the billboards, the owners of the billboard would have to compensate the authority for the removal, so we will call them to come and identify their billboard, pay the administrative cost for the removal, and then they will take their things away. If we send the notice around, and they fail to come, we will auction the billboard and recover our costs,” he said.
