Six coaching centres in Dhaka stripped off licence for causing visual pollution

The Dhaka North City Corporation or DNCC has revoked trade licences of six coaching centres for not taking down their billboards, posters, banners, and signboards despite warnings.

Staff Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 26 Dec 2017, 02:20 PM
Updated : 26 Dec 2017, 02:20 PM

The centres are University Coaching Centre or UCC, UNIAID Coaching Centre, Icon Coaching Centre, Icon Plus Coaching Centre, Omega Coaching Centre and Paragon Coaching Centre.

All of them are located at Dhaka’s Farmgate which falls under DNCC area-5.

Their licences have been cancelled under the City Corporation (Taxation) Rules 1986, the DNCC said in a media statement on Tuesday.

According to it, the city authorities had earlier warned the institutions to stop putting up posters illegally. Mobile courts tried them under the Graffiti Writing and Poster Sticking Control Act.

The final decision to cancel their licences came as they remained reluctant, it says.

Rabindra Sri Barua, Chief Revenue Officer at DNCC, said: “The waste management division asked us to take steps against these institutions. In a requisition it said that these coaching centres were causing visual pollution by haphazardly putting up posters, banners, and festoons.

“The division also held a meeting where the coaching centre authorities promised to take off the posters and banners but they did not do so.”

The institutions were penalised around a month ago. The matter was not disclosed in the media then, he added.

The city corporation is in charge of issuing trade licences to people willing to start business in Dhaka.

A number of institutions across the capital provide coaching for entry to universities and jobs. But there is no concrete data on how many of them are running with valid trade licence.

Different quarters including Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid recently blamed question leaks in public examinations on coaching centres. The government will shut the coaching centres once a law is passed, he said.

A few years ago, University Coaching Centre or UCC was investigated for its alleged involvement in question leaks.

The Anti-Corruption Commission or ACC has said that teachers and coaching centres owners will be investigated for “amassing wealth by giving away tuitions illegally.”