Saudi Gazette report

MAKKAH — Students of the International Technical College in Makkah (ITC) are forced to park their vehicles along the highways and other no-parking areas, which led to some of them receiving daily traffic violation tickets.

According to Makkah newspaper, students demanded the college administration to find a permanent solution to their parking problem as the repeated traffic violations put a heavy financial burden on them.

The students’ parking problem has been going on for many years without solution, leaving a negative impact on the students’ achievements in college.

Students have pointed out that the parking lot located in the southern part of the college campus is very narrow and cannot accommodate all the trainees’ cars. This forced them to park in no-parking zones, such as the side of the highways. The students said they have received traffic tickets exceeding thousands of riyals.

The technical college has received a complaint from a neighbor who lives a few blocks away about the students’ cars crowding the roads in the neighborhood every morning.

He also said parking cars on the side of highways has caused accidents, in addition to distorting the general view of the road, which gives a bad impression to the visitors of Makkah.

For his part, Ali Al-Karida, director of public relations at ITC, said, “We are working to solve the problem by providing an additional temporary space for parking, which can take up to 1,550 cars.”

The college has about 3,000 trainees.

Al-Karida said attempts by the college to convince the traffic department to withdraw violation tickets issued to the trainees in view of the difficulty to find parking space in the area have so far failed.