PGMA supports billboard ban at SCTEX

Gloria favors billboard ban on new road

Joyce Pangco Pañares - Manila Standard Today

PRESIDENT Gloria Arroyo said Sunday she wanted billboards banned along the 94-kilometer Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway that might block the view from the newly built road.

“I will ask our legal team to look at the laws we can invoke to ensure there will be no billboards along [the new road],” she says.

Deputy presidential spokesman Gary Olivar said safety considerations also led to the Palace position that billboards should not be allowed to proliferate along the expressway.

Earlier, the members of the Subic Bay Freeport Chamber of Commerce said they opposed billboards on the highway because those could harm tourism in the area.

“Imagine the ill-effects that billboards will bring to Subic and the areas along [the highway],” group head Danny Piano said.

“[They] will destroy the beautiful landscape along the expressway, which is the foundation of the local tourism industry.

Piano said his group had already sent its position paper to the Bases Conversion and Development Authority, which in turn said it “fully supports the movement to protect the beautiful scenery along [the highway].”

But the agency said only the Public Works Department had jurisdiction over billboards and the authority to take any of them down when it saw fit.

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http://subicbaynews.blogspot.com/2009/06/subic-business-wants-billboards-banned.html

A RESOLUTION UPHOLDING ADMINISTRATIVE ORDER NO. 160 SERIES OF 2006 WHICH DIRECTS DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS AND HIGHWAYS TO ABATE AND DISMANTLE BILLBOARDS SPECIFICALLY ALONG THE SUBIC-CLARK-TARLAC EXPRESSWAY (SCTEX)