The cash-stripped Chittagong City Corporation (CCC) is indiscriminately renting out spaces for advertisement hoardings and billboards, converting the roads and roundabouts into 'hoarding tunnels'.

Pavements, electric pillars, medians and roadside spaces, private and public buildings, including historical sites along the main roads are so much covered with huge boards that they instantly create serious 'vision pollution'.

Road users' vision is totally restricted to the huge hoardings surrounding the thoroughfares.

The CCC Revenue Officer Abdus Shukkur told The Daily Star that the only guideline the CCC follows was the rates of different types of advertisement billboards and hoardings. He said that officially there are 3,731 signboards in the city.

Town planners of the Chittagong Development Authority (CDA) said over the last two years the CCC has covered the entire city with hoardings and billboards without any plan whatsoever. A CDA Town Planner said that the CCC should formulate a policy immediately about where and how hoardings and billboards should be allowed.

"For instance if there is a historical site or a natural scene along the road we should never allow a billboard to go up and deprive passers-by of the pleasure of having a look at it," said a town planner.