Suwon City Temporarily Suspends Illegal Advertisement Collection Reward Program

[Suwon Ilbo=Reporter Seo Dong-young] Suwon City has decided to temporarily suspend the 'Citizen Collection Reward Program for Illegal Advertisements,' which compensates citizens for collecting illegal advertisements, as of March 1.

Until last year, only citizens aged 60 and above could participate in the collection reward program. However, starting January this year, eligibility was relaxed to 'age 20 and above,' causing a surge in illegal advertisement collections. The budget was depleted early, leading to a temporary halt of the project.

From January 1 to the third week of February this year, approximately 1,000 citizens collected 2.324 million illegal advertisements, including 29,116 banners, 346,535 wall posters, and 1.949 million flyers. This is nearly double last year's total collection (1.22 million items).

The city's collection reward program budget for this year is 350 million won, and as of February 21, 309.33 million won has been paid out as compensation. The budget is expected to be depleted by the end of February.

The citizen collection reward program works by submitting collected illegal advertisements, identification, and an application form to the local administrative welfare center in one's residential district, after which compensation is provided. Only one person per household can participate.

Items eligible for collection include banners (including scroll and flag types) attached to utility poles, street trees, and streetlight poles, stickers, wall posters, flyers discarded along roads, and business card-type advertisements. All banners not installed on designated bulletin boards designated by the city are illegal.

The city plans to gather opinions from each district administrative welfare center and amend the ordinance on illegal advertisement collection compensation to resume the citizen collection reward program from the second half of this year.

Jung Ban-seok, director of the city's Urban Design Division, stated, "After relaxing eligibility requirements for the citizen collection reward program, many residents participated in collecting illegal advertisements, resulting in cleaner streets. We will secure additional budget and improve the compensation payment standards to restart the program from the second half of the year."