Subic investors reject plan to put billboards along SCTEx

The public clamor rejecting the proposal to put up billboards along the 94-kilometer Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway (SCTEx) snowballs as a group of businessmen in Subic free port joined to protest the plan.

Professor Danny Piano, president of the Subic Bay Freeport Chamber of Commerce (SBFCC), said the lack of clear policies on the construction of commercial billboards along the SCTEx might result in the proliferation of these giant advertisements.

“This will destroy the beautiful landscape, which is the foundation of the tourism industry,” Piano said during the recent taping here of “The Freeport Forum”, a new television show covering developments in Subic and the Clark Freeport.

According to Piano, tourism is a major driver for the Subic community and that the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA), as well as the Subic-Clark Alliance for Development Council (SCADC), intends to expand into areas along the expressway to address the problem of limited space in Subic .

“So imagine the ill effects billboards will bring to Subic and the areas along SCTEX,” Piano also said, urging concerned agencies to come up with clear and strict policies against the erection of billboards along the expressway.

Guests in the forum were SBMA administrator Armand Arreza, Subic-Clark Alliance Development Council (SCADC) chairman Edgardo Pamintuan, and Clark Development Corp. (CDC) president Benigno Ricafort.

According to Piano, one of the reasons why European countries like Great Britain , Germany , France , Ireland , and Austria , retained their charm to tourists is because they prohibited billboards along highways.

“Business people in these countries recognize that an unmarred landscape promotes tourism and benefits them in the long run,” Piano pointed out, also citing the state of Vermont, which experienced a 50 percent rise in tourism the first two years that it became billboard-free.

Piano also said the SBFCC believes it is in the best interest of the public to prohibit advertisement billboards along the SCTEx.

“There is a brewing movement to make this so,” Piano added, further noting that his group’s position is backed by several organizations and local government units (LGUs).

Piano said the SBFCC has sent a position paper to Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) president Narciso Abaya, and got a reply stating that the BCDA “fully supports the movement to protect the beautiful sceneries along the SCTEx.”

However, the BCDA also pointed out that it can only police or exercise jurisdiction over billboards erected within the right-of-way (ROW) limits of the SCTEX, and that outside the ROW, “it is the right of the owner to his/her property which will prevail.”

Applicable laws that regulate the billboard industry are Administrative Order Nos. 160-A and 160 “in the sense that there is given the power to DPWH (Department of Public Works and Highways) to abate, dismantle or otherwise demolish billboards found to be a public nuisance,” the BCDA also said.

Piano said something must be done by the national government to integrate policies related to the construction of billboards and to assign the responsibility of implementation under a single agency, or in the mean time agreements between agencies and LGUs could be employed.

He added that Olongapo City has already passed a resolution for the abatement and dismantling of billboards along SCTEx. Last year, a Pampanga board member voiced the same sentiment, and recently CDC director Maximo Sangil has asked the same from Abaya.

The clamor to disallow billboards along SCTEX has even found its way into Facebook, a popular social networking site in the Internet, where 147 people to date have expressed support for the ban through the site’s “causes” feature. Rey Garcia