Residents of Abu Dhabi need resevred parking

Abu Dhabi

I have been living in a residential building in Abu Dhabi for over three years now. I have never faced any parking issues in the past three years and therefore continued to live here, even though I pay high rent compared to other areas.

In the past few days, I have noticed that all of a sudden around 25 new luxury cars have started occupying parking slots in the area, thus leaving no room for building residents. There are only six permanent parking slots for residents in front of the building, which are reserved for us after 9pm. The parking slots around the building are not reserved for residents, but operated by Mawaqif. After being here for three years, I have not seen the Mawafiq inspectors in this area regularly. Therefore people who have now moved their cars here are taking advantage of the situation.

These 25 cars are guarded by a man, who continuously cleans and dusts the vehicles in the public parking lot. All cars belong to a rental company, which is located five buildings away from mine and has unused slots around it. But, to avoid paying parking fees there, they have moved cars to this low profile area. Some cars are parked in the no parking slots for days, but are not given any fines. The man guarding the vehicles doesn’t even pay for the parking. The only time I see parking tickets on the vehicles is when the attendant leaves for the night — all day they have no parking tickets, Imagine the losses to the government.

The other issue is that these cars are washed and cleaned in the parking lots by its attendant, while we pay for a wash every two to three days to keep the car clean. Since I live in a building, which has a large sand patch next to it, the cars carry more dust than usual.

My concern is why are parking slots reserved for residents after 9pm only? I finish work at 5pm and when I come home I should have a parking spot available to me then and not after 9pm. In my building, there is a salon, too, and customers always occupy the slots in the evening. If these slots were reserved for residents from 6pm instead of 9pm it would actually serve the purpose.

The residents of Abu Dhabi would have a stress-free life if they were able to find parking when they returned home. Parking is an issue all over the capital and many times you will see residents double parked in residential areas, waiting for a parking slot to become available so they can park.

This situation needs to be reviewed. I request the authorities to look into the issue and reserve certain lots in residential areas for residents only and review the reserved timings, too.

Hoping to see changes made soon, so that it gives some relief to people who are already stressed out.

— The reader is an operations manager based in Abu Dhabi.

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