Dubai: Residents of Al Khail Gate are rushing to buy Dh2,500 annual parking permits with the Roads and Transport Authority set to implement paid parking in the Dubai community on Sunday.
On May 17, Gulf News had first reported that the RTA would activate the paid parking meters in the residential community in Al Quoz on June 17.
The meters were installed across the two phases of the community after the RTA took over the management and operation of parking lots from the community’s management on April 4.
Dh4 parking fee per hour
Following the paid parking partnership agreement between the two entities, RTA had announced paid parking tariff of Dh4 per hour and a maximum daily fee of Dh32 per 24 hours throughout the year.
Quoting the RTA call centre, Gulf News had also reported that RTA’s two customer happiness centres in Dubai Municipality’s Al Manara Centre and Al Kifaf Centre had started issuing the seasonal permit cards for residents from May 15.
Notice boards
RTA had also put up boards notifying a fine of Dh200 for illegal parking in paid parking slots reserved for residents with seasonal permit cards (S 365).
Though no official announcement about the date of implementing the paid parking in the community was made either by the property management or by the RTA yet, some residents said the parking meters are now showing the message ‘parking fees applied from 17/06/18’.
While some residents said they got the confirmation about paid parking implementation from Gulf News, others said they got to know it after the permits secured by the early birds among them indicated the same.
RTA’s annual permits exclusively issued for Al Khail Gate show the issue date as June 17, 2018 and expiry date as June 17, 2019.
RTA had announced options of quarterly and half yearly permits as well.
From Sunday, residents have to either display a permit on their dashboards or pay for parking. Failure to do so will attract fines.
N. Sudheer, a resident of phase two, said he was unaware of when paid parking would start till he got to know about it from his neighbours who bought the permit.
“I was waiting to see if there would be any change in implementing the decision as many tenants had complained to the property management.”
He said it was surprising that there was no official communication from the management about this though they had distributed brochures explaining the new paid parking system and zoning plan.
Rush of applicants
RTA’s customer happiness centre in Al Manara Centre, which is close to Al Khail Gate, has witnessed huge rush of applicants for permits from the community in the past few days.
“I reached there by 8.15am today. There were already some 50 others from Al Khail Gate waiting for the RTA counter to open,” said T.K. Ghosh.
He said tokens were issued only to the first row of applicants. “Some of us were allowed to submit the documents and make the payment in cash. They said they would call me once the permit is ready.”
“The rest were mostly those who didn’t bring cash. They wanted to use credit card. They were asked to go to Al Kifaf Centre which has more counters for this.”
S. Jabbar said he went to Al Manara Centre twice on Sunday. “When I went around 11.45am, they said morning tokens were already over and asked me to check again later. When I went again at 4pm, they had not completed issuing permits to those who got tokens in the morning.”
When he went again on Monday morning, he said he was asked to go to Al Kifaf Centre.
Tenants who visited Al Kifaf Centre said after they submit the documents, it takes some time to get the approval for each permit. Once the approval comes, applicants will be called again to make the payment and receive the permit.
They said many residents had come over to apply for the permit as only two more working days are left before paid parking starts.
