Downtown Amman merchants to strike in protest over parking spaces

AMMAN — Merchants in downtown Amman are planning to hold a three-hour strike on Wednesday in protest against the limited parking spaces for both vendors and their clients, the president of the Garment Traders Association, Sultan Allan, said on Monday. 

Allan said the move is taken by the association following the Greater Amman Municipality’s (GAM) recent move to ban Ammanis and vendors from parking for a few minutes to shop or unload goods into their stores. 

“There is a shortage in parking lots in downtown Amman and the current parking spaces do not accommodate the number of visitors who frequent the area,” he told The Jordan Times over the phone.

Allan noted that the strike will be observed downtown between 1pm and 3pm, and if no tangible solutions are presented, another strike will be held in Jabal Hussein, one of the main commercial hubs in the capital, on Sunday.  

“Three main areas were affected by these procedures, which are downtown, Jabal Hussein and Sweifieh,” he added. 

Allan said the problem is that clients are now reluctant to head to these locations because they receive a traffic ticket when they park near stores. 

“We only want to have a space designated for our clients to park for 30 minutes to enable them to shop in the area and leave,” he added, complaining of a slowdown in business. 

“We have already submitted official letters asking officials to cooperate but there was no positive response. The strike was the last step we wanted to take.” Mohammad Kilani, a downtown Amman merchant, said GAM used to allow motorists to park for 30 minutes and now they stopped doing that. 

“The new Raghdan complex is abandoned now and they have not taken advantage of it. They can make it a parking lot. The already-limited parking spaces in Amman are expensive, charging JD1 per hour,” he told The Jordan Times. 

Officials at GAM were not available for comment despite several attempts by The Jordan Times.