FCTA Reintroduces Park and Pay Policy

Olawale Ajimotokan in Abuja

The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has said that arrangements are being fine-tuned for  the reintroduction of park and pay policy in the FCT.

Director, Department of Traffic Management in the FCTA Transportation Secretariat, Wadata Aliyu Bodinga, disclosed this  yesterday.

He said the commencement of the scheme is billed for the end of first quarter of 2023.  He explained that reintroduction of the on-street parking scheme in the nation’s capital, seven years later, was due to the need to ensure order and seamless traffic flow in the city following exceeding population explosion.

“The FCT is fast developing at a very rapid pace that all hands must be on deck to ensure sanity and orderlines…over the past 47 years, the FCT population has risen to approximately 4,000,000.

“This rise in population leads to heavy usage of the roads which leads to haphazard parking and increases parking competition, which further leads to traffic obstruction, congestion, exposes pedestrians to security/road hazards, increase in emission of carbon footprint into the economy, destruction of public infrastructure such as walk ways, green areas,” Bodinga said.

He stated that reintroduction of the on-street parking scheme would mitigate these challenges and also increase safety and security of pedestrians and vehicles, improve aesthetics of the City, as well as reduce traffic congestion and pollution.

According to him, the sanity the policy would restore on Abuja streets would therefore, boost investments as it would usher in the ease of doing business in the city.

The director, however, stated that the policy, designed to cover the Federal Capital City,  would preliminarily commence in Wuse and Garki by the end of the first quarter without collection of fees.

Bodinga, while assuring residents that the concessioniers would be law-abiding and friendly, revealed that the authorities would ensure close monitoring of their operations to avoid lawlessness and abuses that characterised operations of the former operators.

“We will have a call centre for on-the-spot complaints, and we will digitalize their operations and monitor them from here.

“There is penalty against any concessioniers who goes against our regulations,” he said and added that all legal issues which led to the scrapping of the former scheme have been ironed out as provision is now made for the scheme in the constitution.