The police issued 8,508 parking tickets in 2019 for the offence of parking in a disability parking space in Brussels, reports The Brussels Times.
The number is 1,009 more than in 2018, an increase attributed to a tougher policy on fighting of disability parking offence.
The Brussels-Ixelles zone, with the largest population and the most extensive area, took the lion’s share, issuing 5,063 tickets
A sizeable number of offenders were using out of date cards originally issued to people who were now deceased, or copies that had not been issued by the Directorate-General for persons with a disability.
At the end of last year, the Brussels region carried out a test project in Koekelberg which allowed police, parking patrols and community service workers to use an app to find out immediately if a parking permit for handicapped spaces was genuine or not.
The latest figures are “challenging,” according to Matthieu Angelo, director of the accessibility collective for Wallonia and Brussels (CAWaB). And he pointed out that only 4,000 parking places are currently reserved for disabled people in Brussels, out of a total of 940,000 spaces in the capital.
