AMMAN — “The children can’t play or ride their bicycles
anymore.... The old park was perfect for social distancing, but now it’s hard
because the bigger part of it is gone,’’ said Ahlam, a mother living in
Al-Kamaleyeh and a regular goer to Musa Al-Saket Park in the area, in the
northwest of Amman.
اضافة اعلان
The change in the recreational facility’s boundaries was
brought about at the hands of the very agency tasked with creating these public
spaces to serve tax payers, the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM), which is
building offices within this park and others as headquarters, coupled with
other facilities.
Similar projects are eating or already have eaten into
public parks in Amman, which is home to 134 such spaces and around four million
residents. In Bayader in west Amman, for example, one of the park’s two
football pitches was bulldozed to make room for municipal offices.
Spokesman of the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) Nasser
Rahamneh told Jordan News that the building in Kamaleyeh Park will serve
as an IT center that will “serve the public” like any other component of the
park.
A source familiar with the Kamaleyeh project said the IT
facility was never part of the plan, adding that the concrete structures will
take up five out of the 11 dunums that constitute the total area of the park.
This includes a parking lot designated for dozens of garbage pressers. Starting
after Eid Al-Fitr mid-May, the sources said, the trucks will start using the
area.
The GAM’s spokesperson said that he had no information
regarding the pressers, which are normally parked in designated lots away from
recreational spaces due to the health and environmental hazards they cause.
An expert warned that keeping garbage trucks overnight in a
recreational area such as Musal Al-Saket Park “damages the environment it cause
respiratory diseases”.
“Moreover, it will attract flies and rodents”, and
eventually ruin a place that is supposed to be pleasing to people in terms of
public health and urban aesthetics, said Ibrahim Al-Bdour, former chair of the
House sub-committee on health and current head of the health department at the
National Centre for Human Rights.
That is more bad news for Ahlam, her children and other
Kamaleyeh residents.
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