After losing substantial revenue for consecutive two years, the Sambalpur Municipality has recently issued an auction sale notice inviting bid from interested advertising agencies and firms to display advertisement on the hoardings in the municipal area.
Sambalpur municipality executive officer Aniruddha Padhan informed about the auction sale notice. The last date of receipt of filled-up bid document is May 26.
Though the municipality has several hoardings at strategic places in the city, the civic body has failed to generate any revenue from this source for the last two years. The hoardings in the city had been awarded to a firm for 2011-12 financial years at Rs 2, 85,745.
However, its contract had expired on March 31, 2012. Subsequently, the municipality floated tender for the hoardings for the financial year 2012-13. Some firms also participated in the tender process. The tenders were also opened on April 20 last year. However, the municipality could not finalise tender and remained silent over the issue.
And in the absence of any new contractor, hoardings became free for everyone. Several people started using the 84 frames under the jurisdiction of the civic body to display their products. However, the municipality, which should earn lakhs of rupees from the source, failed to generate any revenue.
Earlier, the Councillors of the municipality had also written to Secretary, Housing and Urban Development Department over the issue and demanded a probe into the delay in finalizing the tender. The Councillors had also demanded action against the municipality officials for the delay.
However, finally, the civic body has issued auction sale notice to offer advertisement rights to the interested firms for displaying hoarding. The successful bidder shall have the exclusive right to utilise advertisement of 16,000 square feet hoardings, 5,000 square feet kiosks and 5,000 square feet bulleting over public place.
“Finally, the civic body initiated steps to earn money from hoarding. However, the municipality has incurred a huge loss because of the delay. The civic body should also think of collecting money from those, who used the hoardings of the municipality in this period,” said local resident Bijaya Sahu.