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Parking meters add to woes of residents

"I recently found out that the parking area in the school where I teach has become paid.This is unjustified because I don't think that students, teachers or even parents who come to pick up their wards should pay a parking fee," said a teacher. Residents are also angry that they pay a parking fee when they visit hotels.

"I was fined because it did not occur to me that a hotel parking area could become a paid facility. Nowhere in the world do hotels ask their guests to pay for parking," said Marie Scheiner, while talking about paid-parking in some hotels on the prestigious Shaikh Zayed Road.

Commenting on the issuey, Engineer Mehdi Ali, Director of Parking at RTA, said, "Paid parking areas in Dubai are decided after taking into consideration several criteria including population density, employment density, retail/leisure density, traffic activity, site survey as well as public complaints. ''So, it is not just an overnight decision to install parking meters.”

However, residents say that finding a decent parking space in Dubai has become tiresome. "The authority should consider removing parking meters from low- income residential areas such as Hor Al Anz. ''Earlier, we would park our cars in any place and walk to our houses, but now if a car is parked wrongly for even a few minutes, we are slapped with a fine," said Irfan Shaikh, a frustrated resident.

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