Dubai: Dubai will observe the 8th Car Free Day on February 5 with an estimated participation of a record 1500 entities from the government and private sectors.
Tens of thousands of employees of the participating entities are expected to ditch their cars for a day to participate in Dubai Municipality's biggest environmental awareness campaign.
Senior officials and employees of the participating departments and companies will be walking, cycling or using any of the public transport modes to work.
Keeping the tradition of leading by example , directors of many participating government departments will be ditching their luxury cars and will ride the Dubai Metro.
Addressing a press conference on Sunday, the Hussain Nasser Lootah Director General of Dubai Municipality urged more government and private entities to take part in the initiative.
He urged residents to make the initiative a big success and requested establishments to provide mass transport modes like buses to facilitate individuals to go to work without cars.
"We want all of them to join us either on this day or some other day. Different entities can observe their own Car Free Days which will help create better awareness," he said in reply to a question by Gulf News on not announcing two separate days of Car Free Day like last year.
In 2016, the Jebel Ali Free Zone Authority had held a Car Free Day on a separate day in which employees of over 100 firms in the Free Zone participated.
Lootah said in total some 30,000 vehicles belonging to officials and employees from 1070 government and private organisations were off the road as part of the initiative in 2016.
It was in 2010 that Dubai joined the global Car-Free Day campaigns, devoting a day to ditch cars and opt for public transport in an attempt to reduce carbon emission and environmental pollution.
While the first edition of the initiative saw just about 1500 employees and officials of the civic body switching to the Metro and buses, other governmental departments and ministries joined the drive over the years.
