GAM floats tender to rid Amman of hundreds of abandoned cars

AMMAN — The Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) is in the process of floating a tender to lift another batch of hundreds of abandoned vehicles from the capital’s streets, according to a municipal official.

“We are going to a float a tender for the removal of hundreds of already spotted abandoned cars. The tender involves requesting tow-away services for the removal of the abandoned cars,” Raed Haddadin, head of GAM’s construction monitoring department said.

GAM teams have already spotted 450 abandoned vehicles in various parts of Amman, Haddadin said, noting that they should be removed within two weeks.

The effort seeks to rid the streets of the capital of causes of visual and environmental pollution by towing away all cars left on the sides of the streets to a guarded location east of the capital, according to GAM.

The municipality started the initiative in 2011 due to the excessive number of abandoned cars left for years across the city.

“Since the launch of the campaign, the municipality has towed away over 7,000 cars, with the majority of the cars being removed from industrial areas around the capital,” Haddadin told The Jordan Times.

 The initiative started with the aim of improving the appearance and cleanliness of the capital, but later became a regulated effort after the municipality realised that huge numbers of abandoned cars were parked on the streets, with some of them being used by young people for negative practices, such as drug use. 

In addition, wrecked vehicles also take up part of the road and create traffic jams in some cases, according to GAM, which said that the abandoned cars are either left because they are damaged and rusty or belong to several people as part of an inheritance.

 “During the past year alone, we removed 2,250 abandoned cars,” Haddadin said.

 In the clean-up campaign, implemented in cooperation with the Central Traffic Department, GAM teams locate abandoned vehicles and notify their owners of the need to remove them. They mark vehicles with stickers informing their owners to remove them within a 14-day period before they are towed away.

 If the owners do not comply, the abandoned vehicles are towed to a six-dunum impound lot near the Ring Road. Owners can retrieve their impounded vehicles after paying fees for transport as well as fees for each day their car was impounded, depending on the size of the vehicle, according to the municipality.