Citizens ‘cooperative’ in removing abandoned cars from Amman’s streets

AMMAN — People are responding and showing cooperation to a municipal initiative that is ridding the streets of the capital from abandoned vehicles, an official said on Wednesday, noting that scores of cars have already been removed this year by their owners. 

The Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) is scheduled to remove 450 abandoned vehicles from Amman’s streets this year, Raed Haddadin, head of GAM’s construction monitoring department, said, noting that dozens of the already-spotted abandoned cars have been removed.

 “GAM issued warnings to owners of abandoned cars found parked and abandoned on the sides of the streets. People have actually responded and a total of 147 abandoned cars have been towed away since the start of the year by their own owners,” Haddadin told The Jordan Times. 

He noted that GAM resumed removing abandoned vehicles from the capital’s streets after completing a tender project, noting that the completion of the tender signaled that start of this year’s removal of old cars left on the sides of streets.

 “Since the start of this month, GAM teams have already removed 40 abandoned cars,” Haddadin noted.

 What started as a campaign turned into a permanent effort that seeks to rid the streets of the capital of causes of visual and environmental pollution by towing away all cars left on the sides of the streets to a guarded location east of the capital. 

The municipality started the initiative in 2011 due to the excessive number of abandoned cars left for years across the city.

 Since the launch of the campaign, the municipality has towed away over 7,000 cars, with the majority of the cars being removed from industrial areas around the capital, according to GAM.

 The initiative started with the aim of improving the appearance and cleanliness of the capital, but later became a regulated effort after the municipality realised that huge numbers of abandoned cars were parked on the streets, with some of them being used by young people for negative practices, such as drug use. 

In addition, wrecked vehicles also take up part of the road and create traffic jams in some cases, according to GAM, which said that the abandoned cars are either left because they are damaged and rusty or belong to several people as part of an inheritance. 

In the clean-up campaign, implemented in cooperation with the Central Traffic Department, GAM teams locate abandoned vehicles and notify their owners of the need to remove them. They mark vehicles with stickers informing their owners to remove them within a 14-day period before they are towed away.

 If the owners do not comply, the abandoned vehicles are towed to a six-dunum impound lot near the Ring Road. Owners can retrieve their impounded vehicles after paying fees for transport as well as fees for each day their car was impounded, depending on the size of the vehicle, according to the municipality.