Over 36k parking violation stickers issued during 2019

Statistics of the Maldives Police Service (MPS) have revealed that over 36,000 parking violation stickers were issued during the past year, 2019.

According to the traffic statistics publicized by MPS from 1 January to 31 December 2019, a total of 39,963 parking violation stickers were issued during the past year.

This was revealed at a time authorities have churned public outcry over the “absurd” amount of parking violation stickers issued throughout a single day.

While parking violation stickers were recorded the highest, second comes cases related to individuals operating vehicles without a valid license.

As such, officers took action on 7,589 such cases that were reported during 2019.

Statistics further reveal that action was taken against 2,857 individuals for operating vehicles while their licenses were withheld and 2,684 cases were reported where individuals had failed to pay up their annual fees or operated a vehicle with an expired annual fee.

Others cases include of road-worthiness stickers without which 2,050 cases were recorded.

The total collected as fines during 2019 reach MVR 27,722,250.

While vehicle operators are required to pay a fee of MVR 250 for the first parking violating sticker, the second sticker comes at MVR 500 and all stickers that follow come at a price tag of MVR 750.

Authorities have drawn public criticism for relentlessly issuing stickers, to “enforce the parking policy” without first providing more parking options.

However, the government continues to assert that work is underway to resolve this mounting issue, having begun projects to build and allocate parking lots across the congested capital city.