Parking fine system is unfair

Sir,

I read with interest your comment on Saturday July 29 (Why it pays to park legally) regarding the issue of parking fines.

I am in complete agreement and would like to tell you my experiences as a resident of Larnaca.
The Larnaca sea front is a strictly no parking zone, yet it is lined with cars from end to end on a daily basis. Most of the time the police drive past without issuing a ticket, or they will randomly choose three cars from the 100 to fine. If someone runs out of a caf? before they issue the ticket they will let them off.

We have counted that they could make at least £10,000 A DAY if they issued tickets.

Instead, I received a ticket on a metre which I believe was faulty – having put my change in for one hour and been gone for 20 minutes, I returned to find a warden writing a ticket. Of course he did not believe my protestations that the machine was faulty. They ‘checked it’ and found it to be fine. That is the second time in that particular area of Larnaca that I have received a fine from what I am adamant is a faulty meter (counting down too fast).

Additionally, in Nicosia (where I work), outside the office building there are no yellow lines and no signs that say you cannot park. I have received three tickets there (all in different spots with no yellow lines) because, as the policeman told me when I went to the station to complain, if there is no sign that says you CAN park then it means you can’t. When I told him that meant that people all over the island parking outside their homes were parking illegally, he said yes they were and could be fined if a policeman felt like it and if I wanted to appeal in court I could but it would cost me a lot more.

As a careful and legal driver and parker, my blood boils when I am receiving unfair fines that I am powerless to protest against (I have been very unlucky!), yet I drive past the seafront which is covered in no parking signs and other areas of Cyprus and the illegal parkers are getting away scott free.

Thank you for saying what must be on the minds of a lot of legal parkers around the island.
PMG
Larnaca

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.