Sharjah: Sharjah City Municipality has begun a campaign to crack down on sandy lots across all areas of the city. The campaign is being conducted in cooperation with the Community Police Department at Sharjah Police General Headquarters.
The campaign started in the Al Nahda area after making sure that the area has a sufficient number of parking spaces. The total number of parking spaces in the area has reached 7,500 so far.
Sharjah Municipality provides multiple choices for parking. It regulates the use of private parking lots that provide 2,500 parking spaces, in addition the parking lots for residential buildings that have exceeded 2,000 parking spaces.
Sharjah Municipality has closed at least 30 parking lots since the beginning of this year for various violations, including motorists sleeping in parked vehicles.
The municipality took action after a number of violations were reported distorting the aesthetic look of the city. Some of them included leaving vehicles for a long period of time, parking randomly, not keeping the area clean and also people found sleeping in their cars.
Ali Ahmed Abu Ghazien, Director of Public Parking Department at the municipality, said that the closure of the 30 sandy parking lots was carried out after inspecting these sites and ensuring that there are other available public parking lots and private car parks in the respective areas. The municipality distributed awareness brochures for three days to urge vehicle owners to avoid parking in the lots that were subject to closure.
Negative activities
Abu Ghazien also said that many other negative activities were monitored in these sandy parking lots. The civic body found motorists abandoning vehicles, throwing garbage, minor accidents and random parking, blocking other cars. Many people also misused these sandy parking areas as they set up random markets and even used vehicles to sleep at night. “The municipality closed such places in continuation of its efforts to monitor all negative behaviour and to maintain the aesthetics of the city,” said the official.
Sharjah City Municipality has urged all members of the community to park their vehicles in regular parking lots and approved yards and also to keep their cars clean.
