Billboards with female cut-outs pulled down

The move caught advertising agencies and corporates unawares, as they had thought it would be smooth sailing for them after the secular Awami National Party came to power in the NWFP in the February 18 polls.

The Shabab-e-Milli — the Jamaat-e-Islami youth wing had set a deadline of May 2 for advertising agencies to remove all billboards with images of women.

Shortly after the agencies missed the deadline, members of the group allegedly pulled down the billboards, Noor Muhammad, a staffer with a leading Peshawar advertising agency, told The Daily Times.

“On the same day, the district government also removed illegal billboards from service roads in various areas of the city,” he said.

Muhammad said the damages to the agencies were huge and the razing was unfair because the agencies paid taxes to the government for installing billboards.

The manager of a leading department store in Peshawar said his company had rented three billboards in the main centres of the city and paid Rs 5,50,000 a year for the space.

One of the company’s billboards for a mattress advertisement at Gora Qabristan featured a girl and boy sitting on a beach. The new billboard now has a bland mattress with no human figures at all.

“We pay taxes to the government and this kind of behaviour will definitely hurt the economy as multinationals companies could divert their investments,” a department store owner said.

The billboards were removed despite the provincial home department issuing directives to the district administration to stop Shabab-e-Milli activists from damaging the hoardings.

Shabab-e-Milli has denied involvement in the removal of the billboards and the district administration claimed it had removed only illegal billboards.