Mayor orders parking-free roads from 7–9 am to enable smooth sweeping

Kolkata: To ensure that parked vehicles do not hinder road sweeping in the city, Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim has directed that all roads be kept parking-free between 7 am and 9 am.

He has instructed Kolkata Municipal Corporation Commissioner Sumit Gupta to coordinate with the police and issue a notification enforcing the no-parking rule during this two-hour period.

“The sweepers associated with cleaning the city roads cannot execute their work properly due to parking on the city roads. Parked vehicles often obstruct road cleaning machines and make it difficult to remove accumulated garbage and dirt. I have instructed our Municipal Commissioner to coordinate with the Kolkata Police and ensure that there is no parking on city roads from 7 am to 9 am, “ said Hakim.

According to a senior KMC official, the ban applies to all types of vehicles, including private cars, buses, and minibuses, even those typically parked overnight in designated spots or depots. The new regulation requires all vehicles to be moved off the streets by 7 AM.

A person named Rajsekhar Ghosh on Friday called up at the ‘Talk to Mayor’ programme from Haltu in Kasba and complained that illegal parking is rampant on the road adjacent to the canal. The Mayor immediately asked the Municipal Commissioner to do the needful in this regard. Hakim said that the car owner has to take responsibility for parking their vehicle.

There are arrangements for parking at the government level, where vehicles can be stored for a fee. However, a section of citizens have developed a tendency of parking vehicles on roads from night till late in the day, and the sweepers of KMC cannot clean roads, he pointed out.