New campaign to sweep up Amman's abandoned cars

By Hana Namrouqa

AMMAN - Abandoned vehicles rusting on the capital’s streets and vacant lots may soon be a thing of the past under a capital-wide campaign, according to the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM).

The campaign, which will start in January and continue throughout the year, aims at improving Amman’s cityscape by removing vehicles that have become eyesores and health hazards, said Mutaz Zaghlawan, head of the technical control office at GAM’s construction monitoring department.

GAM will target vehicles with expired registration and wrecked cars, which become environmental and health hotspots by attracting dirt and waste, Zaghlawan told The Jordan Times over the phone on Wednesday.

As part of the clean-up, implemented by GAM in cooperation with the Traffic Department, and the Drivers and Vehicles Licensing Department, authorities will mark vehicles with stickers informing their owners to remove their cars within a 14 day period before being towed, Zaghlawan said.

Meanwhile, teams from the Drivers and Vehicles Licensing Department will track down owners of vehicles without license plates by using chassis serial numbers, Zaghlawan noted.

“We will publish announcements in daily newspapers with the names of the car owners… if the cars are not removed, we will tow them to a lot near the Hezam Daeri area in east Amman,” Zaghlawan told The Jordan Times over the phone.

People will be able retrieve their impounded vehicles after paying the fees for transport as well as JD0.50-JD1.5 for each day their car was impounded, the GAM official noted.

At the end of the year, GAM will auction off all unclaimed vehicles, Zaghlawan said, noting that initial surveys indicate that there are some 350 abandoned cars on Amman’s streets.

“The numbers increase daily as our teams continue to find more abandoned vehicles… a total of 105 vehicles received stickers, forty cars were removed by their owners following,” Zaghlawan noted.

30 December 2010

Source: The Jordan Times.
Link: http://jordantimes.com/?news=33043.