SIGNS and billboards that have been erected in the Corporate Area without the approval of the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC) will be torn down when the council's compliance team hits the road later in the month, according to Mayor Angela Brown-Burke.

"We are sure you would not want to be caught without the requisite approval, as this will result in your signs being removed," Mayor Brown-Burke told Tuesday's monthly meeting of the council.

Signs and billboards that need KSAC approval before they can be put up include video boards, banners, shop and business signs, hanging signs, signs painted on the walls of buildings, and murals.

The mayor said that the council's approval process for signs had been updated to make it easier f or applicants to receive approvals, while appealing to persons who had erected signs without the requisite approval to "come in and sort this out".

Meanwhile, the mayor yesterday extended the council's deepest sympathies to the parents and families of four-year-old Rushane 'Ricardo' Burford, who was shot and killed on January 31, and also to the family of 14-year-old Shariefa Saddler, of Olympic Gardens, who was raped and strangled on January 30.

"We meet at a time when our people are extremely concerned about a number of issues that include safety issues of protecting our children from physical and emotional abuse, protecting our women from domestic violence and rape," she said.

The mayor noted that Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, in her address to the nation on Monday night, said that to achieve the necessary levels of debt reduction greater levels of accountability and discipline were required in the society. Members of the KSAC, including workers, officers and councillors all needed to answer that call, she said.

"Many of the decisions we take are not easy ones. This is a society where many thrive on disorder and chaos, where we want an end to criminality but we are not brave enough to support the measures that will get us there; where we all want government, local and central, to provide the service: good roads, consistent and effective garbage collection, but we don't want to pay for our trade licences, or vending registration, or property taxes," the mayor said.

"I hope that you will agree with me that today marks a new day where we will work every day to earn and deserve that trust and confidence," she said.