The parents of Zora (2) have been wrongly issued traffic fines several times for their daughter’s wheelchair bus. When they object several times, they hear that their only option to get their right is through the courts. According to the ombudsman, the municipality often makes mistakes when it comes to errors with parking permits and the handling of those objections: “People often feel powerless.”
Mujtaba lives with his young family in Noord. His daughter Zora has a rare muscular disease and that is why, after a long, administrative process, they received a disabled parking card a few weeks ago. This would allow them to park for free anywhere in the city. But after a week there were two parking fines on the mat, while the card was still in the car.
The municipality’s scanning cars cannot register the disabled card, but only scan for license plates. And that license plate is still not properly registered with the municipality to this day.
After several attempts to contact the municipality and objections, according to the municipality there was no other option than to go to court. After questions from AT5 to the municipality, the fines were waived and an apology was issued. “Fine, of course, but it shouldn’t be like this. Not even because I received that apology a week ago and was simply fined again,” says Mujtaba.
Recognizable
Ombudsman Munish Ramlal calls this a recognizable example. Errors and mistakes made by scan cars often lead to: unjustified fines, but, in particular, the municipality’s handling of the matter could be much better, he believes. “People often feel powerless when they try to arrange something with the municipality and they cannot get it done. Not even with an objection procedure, then they are sent from pillar to post. File types, rules or systems often seem more important than human Contact.”
Mujtaba: “You do sometimes feel powerless or sad. We often had to cry about it. Then we thought: is it really necessary that we have to cry about formalities instead of why we got into this situation? We would much rather spend our time on our family, and that is sometimes painful,” he says.