The FCT Administration has warned against the sale of automobiles within residential areas as failure to adhere to the directive might lead to the impoundment of such vehicles.
Addressing journalists in Abuja, the Chairman, Ministerial Task team on City Sanitation and Traffic Management, Comrade Ikharo Attah, said the FCTA frowns at the trend and hence will commence a clampdown on defaulters.
Attah, who spoke on the sidelines of the ongoing raid on illegal car mart hotspots in the city at the weekend, said the warning followed the receipt of several complaints about the menace from residents.
He said: “The FCTA has made it very clear that you cannot set up a car mart where you sell cars within your residential premises. So, the FCTA wants to reiterate it; you cannot sell cars within your premises as your house is not a car mart.
“Bringing up to 50 and 70 or more cars within a residential neighbourhood where you live in just a three-bedroom flat in Area 10, we will not allow that to continue. We will impound the vehicles; we will take them away because neighbours are complaining.
“Some persons will go there and rent a flat or even a duplex, and turn the entire neighbourhood into a car mart and they will bring as many as a 100 cars without plate numbers with which they litter the whole street.
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“That we will not accept, so they must quit and return to the appropriate area, which is temporarily allocated along the Kubwa Expressway until issues around the Dakwa Auto Market are settled.”
Meanwhile, the joint taskforce on car mart enforcement has cleared illegal car marts and mechanic workshops on pedestrian walkways along the AA Rano Filling Station and AYA Roundabout in Asokoro District. They also arrested three persons and towed three cars parked on the walkways in the area.
Speaking during the exercise, Director of FCT Directorate of Road Traffic Services (DTRS), Wadata Bodinga, said although there is almost total compliance for now, but they want to make sure that the compliance level is a continuous one as well.
He noted that the exercise is totally encompassing, as every nuisance that is taking place in a particular place is included, that’s why they studied the place first, to take the characteristics of the nuisance anywhere visited.
According to him, “If we say that we clear only car marts, there are other nuisances such as those selling things, having workshops within undesignated areas in the city. So we try to incorporate all those nuisances taking place. This is to ensure that all of them are stopped.”
Similarly, the Director of Parks and Recreation Department, Risikatu Abdulazeez, disclosed that they are putting a sort of semi -permanent measures, in the sense that they are going to invite plants nursery operators to occupy all the notorious places either on green verges or road buffers to ensure these dislodged people do not return.
Also speaking, the Director of Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB), Dr. Hassan Abubakar, said “this is a joint operation, we are not unaware of the festive period, and a lot of waste is going to be generated alongside with all these car marts and other things. That’s why we have to sit up, and we must make sure that the city is clean.
“We will not allow any nuisance to continue in this city, as we will be up to our responsibilities. We will make sure that we clean this city. We have capacity to do so and we will not allow this to continue as the city must be cleaned.”
