Rules are to be respected

Dozens of rules and regulations that one should fulfil in order to get a licence to practise a profession are posted on the Greater Amman Municipality website.

However, most of these regulations are disobeyed and people just do what they want. As a result, law-abiding citizens suffer and live in chaos.

Some of these rules ask citizens: not to harm other people or annoy; not to pollute the environment; not to cause traffic problems; not to cause crowding; to restrict oneself to the terms of the licence and not practise anything else; to have enough space and proper construction.

During the last few years, scores of small supermarkets mushroomed all over Amman, even in the midst of residential areas. The owners of these supermarkets boast of having legal licences, but I wonder how they managed to get them.

For more than two decades, my family and I have been lived in west Amman, in what used to be a fairly residential area. Unfortunately, a small supermarket sprang up all of a sudden in the garage of the next neighbour’s villa.

The proprietor behaves as if he rented the whole street. What he practises daily violates most GAM rules and even human rights.

Huge lorries stop there to deliver goods, machines are placed on the pavement and hundreds of students from a public school nearby gather daily in front of our house to buy all sorts of things.

Just imagine the resulting garbage on the street, the pollution and the traffic problems they create, not to mention the harassment of innocent residents and sabotage to their dwellings.

We, neighbours, complained dozens of times to the mayor and the GAM complaints department. GAM field staff visited the place and warned the owner about violating certain rules and violating the terms of his licence, to no avail. He is as defying as ever, feeling that he is above the law.

Reform is a holistic process. If the core values of GAM are based on honesty, transparency, justice, continuous development and flexibility to change, and to offer genuine service to the community and to the city, then GAM must be more efficient in planning and stricter in giving licences or withdrawing them in case of law violations.

Besides, GAM rules must be changed to keep up with modern life. 

More emphasis should be put on ethical education related to the environment, health, human rights as well as on living and eating, and not to trespassing on neighbours’ property.

This should be the concern of all sectors of society. We are the product of our own thoughts; if we think ethically, we behave ethically. 

The opposite is true.

Randa Jraisat,
Amman