aka more administrative headaches
At the same time as our visa renewals were underway, we also had to renew parking permits for our cars to be able to park on the street in front of our house. A few years back the government, in an effort to increase revenue and to cut down on the number of cars parking in certain areas, created a permit process that requires . . . dang it, as I’m explaining it I’m realizing how convoluted the whole process is and you’re not going to understand it.
Basically in order to cut down on illegal housing/subletting/crowding of too many people in one apartment, all leases had to be registered with the government. Then, to get a parking permit, your lease had to be registered with the government and pay a fee of approximately $300/year per car. But just for expats. If you’re local, you can have 6 permits and they are all free. That sort of tiered privilege and pricing is incorporated into every aspect of life here.
Anyway, we had a parking permit that expired in September. We couldn’t renew it before it expired because Josh didn’t have his new Emirates ID yet. These IDs have chips in them and carry all of your personal information — fingerprints, medical, etc. You can’t do much without them. When I go to the psychiatrist to get my Zoloft prescription, he has to insert my card into a chip reader that pulls up my information on the computer and then he can enter the prescription. Hello Big Brother!
So once Josh had his new Emirates ID, (about 6 weeks ago) he went to the Traffic Directorate to get another parking pass. Long story short, our current lease is managed by a 3rd party company so the computer couldn’t recognize Josh as a valid resident because the name on the lease wasn’t his name or his employer’s name. You would think there would be a way to get around that, but things here aren’t set up for the exception to the rule.
Since she didn’t know how to issue one, instead of finding a solution, the woman assisting him asked, “do you really need a parking permit?” Um, yes we do. Your Ministry started requiring one or we risk getting $100 ticket every day. Then she went on to suggest, “Well, how about you just park on the sidewalk behind your other car?” (the way the locals do). Her third helpful solution was, “You live in a villa. I don’t think they ever go down that street to issue tickets. You’ll be fine.”
Josh insisted they route his application up the chain to a supervisor who could hopefully figure out a way to issue a parking permit and a month later, still nothing. But we hadn’t gotten a ticket so . . .
Then one morning last week, sure enough, a ticket was on our car. So he went back to the Traffic department, showed the lady his ticket, she was sheepish and giggled, but still had no solution and no one else knew what to do to get a permit issued. I left the car in the school parking lot for a few days (so we didn’t keep racking up fines), and one of the drivers/all purpose people at Josh’s office made it his personal mission to visit the office 3 times a day until finally, Josh got a text saying his application for a permit had been approved. Bless him. I have no idea what he did, but sometimes it just takes persistence to make someone want to make an effort to find a way around the system.
And yes, we paid the ticket. No, we didn’t get a refund. That’s just how things go here. Am I annoyed by that? Nope. Just happy it’s done.