Why FCTA Reintroduces Park & Pay Policy ..Assures of Best Practices

By: Wisdom Acka

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

Director, Department of Traffic Management in the FCTA Transportation Secretariat, Wadata Aliyu Bodinga, made this disclosure Monday press briefing in Garki, Abuja.

According to him, the commencement of the scheme was slated for end of first quarter of 2023.

Bodinga 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 Federal Capital City, following exceeding population explosion of the Territory.

His words: “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 million people.”

He added, “This rise in population leads to heavy usage of the roads, which leads to haphazard parking and increased parking competition that further leads to traffic obstruction, congestion; exposing pedestrians to security/road hazards, increased emission of carbon footprint into the economy, destruction of public infrastructure such as walk ways, green areas”.

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.

The Director emphasized that 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.

Bodinga, however, said 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.

The Director, 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,” he reiterated.

Bodinga remarked that there is penalty against any concessioniers, who goes against the regulations.

He said 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.