Hartley Neita

I would hate to live in a country where beautiful women hide their faces with veils from my sight.

Unfortunately, I am living in a country where the beauty of the landscape will one day be completely hidden from sight by billboards which get larger and larger. And uglier and uglier.

One of my fond memories of Cuba is that this is not so in that island. Except for a few artistically attractive displays of motivational, national messages, there are no billboards spoiling the beauty of the country. St. Lucia's countryside is still not despoiled with these hideous structures. Here, however, they are everywhere, even at our well-known beauty spots.

It is sad.

During the last three years, the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation and our parish councils have been mounting a campaign to remove advertising messages which clutter our towns. However, the motivation is not for aesthetic reasons. It is, instead, a way of forcing these advertisers to provide these councils with money. Cluttering the environment is all right, as long as you pay to do so.

Campaign needed

I am, therefore, pleased that Basil Smith, our new director of tourism, has drawn attention to this problem. Basil Smith should know, and he is an experienced communicator, that one speech will not result in any change. To reduce this uglification of our country requires a campaign involving the Government, the private sector, and that undefined group called non-governmental organisations. And the primary problem is that it will need an advertising agency - and all of them earn millions from the production of these billboards - to develop this campaign.

At present, the toll roads do not allow for the erection of billboards. Pray, please, that this will be forever so. One would have thought, years ago, that our buses would not have become uglified by turning them into movable billboards. I am surprised that Mayor McKenzie and his mayoral pee-pee-cluckershave not demanded their dollars of flesh from the Jamaica Urban Transit Company.

What is the use of an architect designing a beautiful building if it is hidden from view by these advertising monstrosities?

Note, too, that except for security companies who warn criminals of their presence, billboards are not erected in communities such as Beverley Hills, Barbican and Cherry Gardens.

The business moguls who live in these areas would never erect a billboard in these residential areas, but they have no qualms about their products being blazoned on billboards in inner-city communities.

You also will not see graffiti stating 'Portia Rule' or 'Bruce is the Man' on the walls of the fences of their houses.