SANJAY SHARMA
JAMMU: Illegal parking in Jammu has become a headache for people living in different localities and also for the concerned authorities as despite all measures and strictness, the problem is getting worse with each passing day. With people having no place to park their vehicles, the roads in and around the city are turning into parking hubs as police and other civic authorities have become mute spectators as the number of defaulters is so high that Challans cannot be issued against each and every citizen.
The people of Jullaka Mohalla, Ward No 2 of Jammu city, are confronting a difficult situation with vehicles parked haphazardly on both sides of road connecting the locality with Circular Road as finding a thorough way on this stretch is next to impossible. Despite steps taken by Administration to decongest the city, illegal parking remains a challenge here and lack of enforcement by police has only made matters worse.
Ramesh Kumar, a resident of Jullaka Mohalla, irked over people for parking their vehicles in a random manner for days together thus creating umpteen problems for people of the area, said that issue has been raised number of times but to no avail as administration is unmoved and has adopted indifferent attitude in the matter.
Girdhari Lal Sharma, a senior citizen, said that another issue which the hapless people of Jullaka Mohalla face is entry of ambulances in the locality because the bottlenecks created by wrongly parked vehicles make it virtually impossible to reach houses to shift patients to a medical facility. “This is a serious issue and demands urgent panacea as every single second matters while shifting the critical patients to hospitals”, he said, adding that people can’t become so insensitive towards the issue as this can happen with anyone and everyone at some point of time.
While talking to STATE TIMES, Councilor Ward-2, Jagdish Kumar Sharma also expressed his helplessness as despite his intervention no step has been taken by the concerned quarters to eradicate this problem which has turned intolerable with people facing ordeal on almost daily basis. He said that this problem has led to disruption in many services because illegal parking on the aforesaid stretch creates hindrance thus blocking traffic, especially those vehicles which are meant for public services like sky-lift crane for repairing street lights, water tanker supply and many others.
The Councillor said that even SSP Jammu was approached for resolution of this issue but nothing positive came out as problem still persists with no remedy in sight. The Corporator said that JMC Commissioner has assured to construct a multi-storey parking in vicinity to resolve the issue but till date work on aforesaid facility has not been started and there is no hope for same to become a reality in near future as well.