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I RECENTLY received a compliance notice from DBKK for displaying signage without an advertisement licence under the Kota Kinabalu Municipal Council (Advertisement) By-Laws 1983. 

I am not alone. Other retail businesses inside shopping malls in this city have received similar notices. In some cases, the signage in question had never previously been raised as an issue.

The by-laws define a signboard as something “visible from a street or public place” and “fixed to the façade or street frontage” of a building. 

A shop inside a mall faces an internal corridor, not a street and not a building frontage. 

Reading the by-laws plainly, it is not obvious that mall signage falls within that definition at all. 

The same by-laws do define “advertisement” more broadly to include displays in any “place or public resort,” which a mall corridor could arguably satisfy. 

That may be what officers are relying on. But DBKK has not said so anywhere in writing.

There is no circular, no published guidance and nothing that explains how a by-law from 1983 is meant to apply to shopping complexes that were not around when it was drafted.

In practice, officers appear to be enforcing their own reading of a provision that has never been officially interpreted or published as policy.

This matters for two reasons. First, business owners have nothing to check against. 

Many had no idea this was even a licensing question until the notice arrived. 

Second, if a mall corridor qualifies as a “place or public resort,” the same reasoning could extend to a company nameplate on an office door in an upper floor corridor that may also be open to the public. 

The scope of this is wider than it first appears.

The basic expectation in any fair regulatory system is that people are told what the rules require of them before they are penalised for not following them. That has not happened here. 

Issuing notices under a provision that has never been publicly explained or officially tested places the entire burden of an unresolved legal question on the businesses least equipped to answer it. That is not fair and it is not good governance.

Before any further notices are issued, DBKK should publish a clear written statement on whether the 1983 by-laws cover signage inside malls and office buildings, together with the legal basis for that position. 

It should also announce a grace period of at least 90 days from that date before enforcement continues, with existing notices held in the meantime.

DBKK has said it wants to support small businesses in this city. Here is a straightforward way to show it.

Cautious Hornbill

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