The law implementation wing at the Muscat Municipality has embarked upon a mission cleaning up the streets and parking lots of abandoned vehicles, which showed an increasing trend in the recent past.
According to earlier statistics released by the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI), nearly 200,000 people have left the Sultanate of Oman in over 18 months after the coronavirus lockdowns were executed.
It is said that a large number of people must have left the country without selling their vehicles after they found no takers for the same.
"We have begun a cleaning spree of the abandoned vehicles with a view to avoid inconvenience to fellow vehicle owners who find parking lots being occupied by vehicles for a long period of time," an official from the civic authority said.
He further said that this measure of towing over the abandoned vehicles is carried out after giving due notices to the vehicle owners or the notices stuck on the windshield for months but found out that no action was initiated by the vehicle owners and is part of our efforts to avoid distortions to smooth traffic flow.
Stickers advising the vehicle owners to remove their vehicles, mostly parked near Ghala, Bausher, Muscat and old airport, have been kept under the car wipers but most of them remained at the same spot for months and the municipality decided to tow them over.
"There have been a huge number of people abandoning their vehicles, bought mostly on loans but failed to repay the same due to job loss or death during the Covid-19 and no legal heir came forward to claim the same," an official from the authority added.
Usually, these vehicles, either confiscated or towed away by the civic authority for various offences but the owners failed to claim the same despite many reminders, are put on an auction at a yard in Al Amerat for the public.
"All such vehicles will be sold in the condition that they are kept at the yard and no claim or damages will be encouraged later," the source said.
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