JULIE JANSE VAN RENSBURG writes:
Almost a year ago I wrote to complain about the undercover disabled parking bays at Festival Mall on the Dischem side.
I have a valid parking “licence” issued by the metro police for which I had to pay R100. At the same time Festival Mall’s office also issued me with a remote to open the gated areas further down close to the cafés and the banking areas.
Most of the time when visiting the mall, I have to park in the undercover areas and it often happens that motorists who do not have disabled stickers in/on their vehicles are just too lazy to park further from the entrance and seem to be of the opinion that they are entitled to use the disabled bays at their leisure. Not so long ago, I had to go there and confronted a man and his young son offloading a whole trolley full of groceries into his vehicle occupying a disabled bay. The other bays were also occupied but on checking, each of the others did have disabled stickers.
When I told this man that he was not allowed to park here, he swore at me and told me to f… off.
At some stage after my previous letter in November last year, Festival Mall issued a statement to Kempton Express that you would be looking into the disabled parking bays on the Dischem side in an effort to stop every Tom, Dick and Harry from simply taking over while we, who are entitled to park there because of the fact that we walk with difficulty, sometimes have to hobble along the best we can.
If my memory serves me correctly, there is a security guard in that area. Should he not also be stopping non-disabled persons from parking there? I have even seen delivery vehicles parking there to drop off whatever they have to deliver, and sometimes they also take their own time to remove their vehicles.
May I suggest that those bays are chain-locked and the security guard carry a key and open such barriers after making sure that the would-be clients are in fact licenced to park there?
With the festive season now fast approaching, I shudder to think what we will have to go through if and when we also need to go shops like Checkers, Hi-Fi Corp, Game, etc, not to mention get prescriptions made up at Dischem.
Please, management, do something about the undercover parking situation.
Festival Mall management replies:
Centre management and the landlord of Festival Mall share the writer’s sentiment.
We do agree that the able-bodied shoppers who utilise our disabled parking bays lack moral fibre. It is extremely difficult to control these types of people in our community.
Placing a security officer to manage this situation has proved inadequate in the past, as these people who have little regard for disabled people, have nil respect for our security staff. We have had incidents of verbal and physical abuse against centre personnel.
Wheel clamping is an extremely risky endeavour as we expose the centre to the risk of claims of damage to property as well as, and further verbal and physical abuse to our centre personnel.
The chains or drop-down bollards are good ideas. However, it will require a full-time staff member positioned at these disabled parking bays. We are investigating the logistics of implementing this.
