By LITO RULONA Correspondent THE city council’s trade and commerce committee is now reviewing city hall’s policy on billboards in the city. The committee, chaired by Councilor George Goking, was tasked by Vice Mayor Raineir Joaquin Uy to do this after the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) called on city hall to enforce a national law that prohibits the use of overpasses to hang billboards. Uy also asked the City Legal Office to look into DPWH-10 assistant director Efren Berba pronouncements that the local government has the power to remove billboards installed in violation of the Billboard Regulations Act of 2010. “Kung dili kini i-regulate, mahimo na kini karon nga eyesore og lain na kaayo sa panan-aw sa mga motorist along the national highway,” said Uy. The DPWH official said the billboards attached to the overpasses on CM Recto Avenue, Bulua, Lapasan and the area near the West City Central School in Carmen were illegal. “Klaro man kaayo kini nga violation,” Uy said. He said the misplaced billboards would be removed after Goking’s committee and the City Legal Office submitted their reports. Uy said that while city hall and private firms that built the overpasses signed contracts years ago, the documents could not go against a national law. For his part, Goking said while business firms promoting their products would benefit from such billboards, these have disadvantages like degrading “the quality of the streetscape experience.” Goking said the road right-of-way is a public domain, and for the general public to use, enjoy and experience. “Instead, parts of the (road right-of-way) have become, claustrophobic, unsafe and unkempt, mainly due to the overwhelming presence of billboards and their steel support structures... “Unwanted visual information called billboards now contribute to a new kind of pollution--one that is visual, without even mentioning some moral questions sometimes [raised] by the religious groups,” he said.