Billboard owners told to pay €1,500 a year per structure are up in arms, saying the authorities are turning a blind eye to competitors they accuse of having been flouting the law for years.
They also insist that the annual licence fee was supposed to have been put on hold pending the revision of controversial regulations issued last year, which were meant to crack down on illegal advertising, including billboards.
The licence, which was introduced by Legal Notice 103, the Billboards and Advertisement Regulations, is payable to Transport Malta and also applies to other forms of roadside advertising that is larger than 0.5 square metres.
At the time, the Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprises (GRTU) had called on the government to amend the regulations saying they put a heavy burden on businesses and the retail sector.
A month into the controversy, at the end of April 2016, the Planning Parliamentary Secretariat had agreed to launch a public consultation period with the intention of fine-tuning the legal notice.
The regulations, which also applied to billboards used by political parties, had been deemed by the Opposition as an attempt to prevent it from spreading its message at the height of the Panama Papers scandal.
Though the Nationalist Party ended up removing its billboards, it challenged the legal notice in court and the case is still pending.
Nearly a year later, the issue seemed to have been relegated to the back-burner with several of the structures slapped with an enforcement notice by the PA still standing.
We instructed our members not to pay the fees for the time being as we feel a level playing field does not exist”
An exercise carried out yesterday by a Times of Malta photographer indicated that some of the billboards are even being used to promote Malta’s EU presidency or the activities being organised under the patronage of the Office of the President.
Questions sent to the Planning Authority on the number of illegal billboards were still not answered by the time of writing.
The issue was recently raised in Parliament by Opposition MP Jason Azzopardi who enquired about the public consultation on the 2016 legal notice.
Planning Parliamentary Secretary Deborah Schembri replied that the new regulations were being finalised and were due to be published soon.
However, it transpired that the €1,500 licence fee that was supposed to have been put on hold pending this public consultation was, nevertheless, being demanded.
GRTU CEO Abigail Psaila Mamo said members were taken completely by surprise when, at the end of last month, they received a notice to pay €1,500 by the beginning of March if they wanted to keep their billboards in place for another year.
“Discussions with the government had been quite intensive and we had submitted the counter proposals last September but received no feedback since then,” she said.
At the start of the year, the government decided to enforce this legal notice, albeit on billboards only, but no action was being taken to address those flouting the laws, she said.
“For this reason, we instructed our members not to pay the fees for the time being as we feel a level playing field does not exist,” she added.
“The least we expect is to have one consolidated entity to regulate this sector which, at the moment, is fragmented between various State entities,” Ms Psaila Mamo said.
She pointed out that the GRTU had long been complaining with the Planning Authority that not all operators were being treated in the same manner when it came to enforcement. The regulator, however, had refuted such claims.