Accused of overzealous enforcement of signboards, DBKL says merely ensuring businesses comply with by-laws

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 25 — The Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) today explained that its recent enforcement operations against signboard licensing violations around the city aimed at ensuring all business premises comply with the established by-laws.

In a statement, DBKL said that this includes the Advertisement (Federal Territories) By-Laws 1982 and the Local Government Act 1976, which among others require that all business signboards/advertisements must be in the national language, though they may also include other languages in accordance with the role of the Malay language as the national language.

“According to these by-laws, for business premise signboards, the written words in the national language must take precedence and be larger than the words in other languages.

“However, if the name of a firm, association, or company, as registered under the Business Registration Act 1956, the Companies Act 1965, or the Societies Act 1966, consists of or includes words that are not in the national language, there is no requirement to translate those words into the national language,” the statement said.

In addition, it said DBKL is also responsible for processing and approving signboard applications for business premises, which are part of the composite licence, a licence that is approved along with the business premises licence.

“For business signboard licensing, visual confirmation from the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) is one of the mandatory documents that the applicant must submit to the DBKL for approval,” it said.

In the statement, DBKL also said that throughout this year, in collaboration with DBP, it has conducted enforcement operations at six shopping malls and issued 31 notices to various premises which violated the licensing regulations.

“Among them are premises that have a business licence but do not have approval for a signboard, which may be slapped with compound fines and removal of the signboards.

“Also the premises that have both a business and signboard licences, but violate the advertising conditions, such as having the text in national language smaller than that of the other language,” it said.

Yesterday, a news portal reported that the Malaysian Chinese Restaurant Association claimed their businesses were facing escalating operational costs due to DBKL’s strict enforcement regarding signboards.