Abuse of parking for disabled a sticky issue for traffic police
- | Sunday | 31st March, 2019
PANAJI: With over 200 registered vehicles for differently-abled persons operating in the state and an average of 10 parking spots in each town, parking space for such individuals is at a premium. Despite this, it now turns out that beat cops have no specific mechanism to identify if a vehicle parked in a spot belongs to a differently-abled person, a senior government official said.“Parking spaces are marked and a list of all the registered invalid carriage licences has been provided to police personnel,” said a senior transport department official. “Very often other cars are parked in handicapped parking spots but we cannot make out if the car belongs to a handicapped person because the list is not handy.”According to the directorate of transport, there are 209 vehicles which have an ‘invalid carriage licence’ in Goa.The Supreme Court bench of Justice A K Sikri and Justice Ashok Bhushan, in December 2017, made it mandatory for a minimum of three to five parking spaces to be reserved for persons with disabilities near the entrances of government buildings.In 2016 itself, traffic police and the Corporation of the City of Panaji (CCP) had been asked to ensure that 10 parking spaces in Panaji, which are notified for persons with disability under Section 69 of The Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995, are reserved exclusively for persons with disabilities.While Goa police and CCP have tried clamping vehicles parked in such reserved spots, there are no set guidelines to identify if the vehicle belongs to a differently-abled person since the nature of the disability can be different.Now, the state has asked Imagine Panaji Smart City Development Limited (IPSCDL) to find a solution.A meeting was held on March 26 to decide on a “concrete procedure” for identification of the vehicles used by people with physical challenges.While Goa police has suggested that CCTV cameras can be installed near the reserved parking space, the option of government-issued stickers or QR codes were also discussed.
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