Text alerts for those posting illegal fliers

By Cai Yang  |   2008-12-24  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

THE Shanghai urban management authority has adopted an SMS notification system to crack down on illegal flyer-posting on the street. Those who leave illegal flyers will now be sent text messages instructing them to report to district-based public sanitation bureaus to receive education and punishment. Those who ignore the alerts will have their phones shut off.

The new short message platform replaces a similar system where perpetrators were phoned.

The new SMS system is more effective and cheaper, officials said.

Shanghai adopted the call system in 2003 to combat illegal flyers. However the effects were poor as many cell phone users just transferred or blocked the calls.

"The government had pay up to about 230,000 yuan (US$33,582) every year to run the system," said Wang Ruwei from the Shanghai Public Sanitation Bureau yesterday. "In order to tighten the administration and save costs, we decided to introduce the new SMS system and stopped using the call system," Wang said.

The new SMS system, which started a trial operation on September 17, will send a reminder SMS message to cell phone numbers printed on illegal fliers, telling the users about the violation and asking him or her to cooperate in investigations at relevant departments within two days.

So far the new system has contacted 3,349 cell phone users and 635 of them have come forward as they were told.

"Any phone owner who fails to show up within two days will have his number cut off within five days," Wang said. "Some 2,000 cell phones have been switched off since we started running the new SMS system, which costs 1 jiao for each SMS."