Round table on making more parking spaces for persons with disabilities in Zagreb, took place in the premises of the Croatian Automobile Club – HAK, and it was attended by the representatives of APEO, member of Human Rights House of Zagreb, other associations of persons with disabilities, the European Commission, the Croatian government ministries and other relevant institutions. The aim was to warn on the big problem that persons with disabilities daily face with, and that is improper parking by Croatian citizens, on places reserved for persons with disabilities.
The Head of Zagrebparking, Marijan Tomasic, said that the city of Zagreb has about 1.000 parking spaces for disabled persons, excluding those in shopping malls, garages and private parking areas, and that so far, there were issued more than 9.000 characters of accessibility for their usage, however there are still cases of violations of these rules.
Darko Grac from the Ministry of the Internal Affairs, said on the round table that in 2008 out of 86.350 cases of violations related to improper parking, 23.246 related to improper parking on places reserved for persons with disabilities. In 2009 out of 80.669 cases of violations related to improper parking, 16.044 were related to parking in places reserved for persons with disabilities, while this year out of 19.486 cases of improper parking, 4.552 relate to improper parking on places reserved for persons with disabilities.
Participants of the round table ”Let’s make parking places for persons with disabilities”, Zagreb, April 2010
‘’Parking places reserved for persons with disabilities are usually taken by ‘’healthy persons’’, because they use the fact that those places are free of charge, while not realizing that a life of a person with disability depends on that place. People with crutches, canes and wheelchairs cannot get out of their car properly on regular parking places, plus those places are too far from the target they headed to, so they usually turn back and go home, without finishing their business they had there’’, said Jadranka Luketa-Markovic, member of HSUTI Network.
Safet Ramadan from the European Commission presented the examples of good practice in Brussels, the experiences of the European Union. He said that in public places in major cities should be free parking spaces for persons with disabilities in the ratio of 1:17 (to 17 parking spaces comes one for people with disabilities). He also said that persons with disabilities – if they do not have enough parking spaces – can park their car for free in a place that are usually being charged.
The round table was part of Svehrvatske (All-Croatia) campaign ‘Understanding the issue of lack of parking spaces for persons with disabilities’ implemented by APEO under the supervision of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Croatia.
Svehrvatska campaign is struggling to raise the awareness of Croatian public and authorities of the issue of insufficient number of parking places for persons with disabilities and usage of those places by un-aware Croatian citizens without disability needs.
