AMMAN — Shop owners in
Irbid are said that they fed up of being ticketed for violations by 13 separate authorities and are considering a two-hour closure in protest, while calling for the merging of the separate entities into one committee authorized to ticket rule breakers, according to Al-Ghad News.
اضافة اعلان
Shop owners said that tickets issued to them by the ministries of environment, labor, trade and industry, health, and interior, as well as the municipality, the Public Security Directorate, and the Jordanian Food and Drug Administration, has caused a chaotic situation amid an economic slump in the governorate.
Shop owners said that merchants are unable to pay their bills due to the defense orders and have caused customers to shy away from their shops, in addition to merchants’ own concerns of letting anyone into their shops without the “green” Sanad pass lest they be fined heavily.
Defense Order No. 46 for 2021, imposes a fine of JD1,000 on any shop found to be in violation of the order by allowing anyone in the shop without a “green” Sanad pass. The fine is raised to JD3,000 if the violation is repeated, and raised again to JD5,000 if the violation is repeated a third time.
The fourth violation would result in closure of the shop for a week. Shop owners decried this measure in light of the harsh economic situation and the accumulation and spoilage of perishable goods in some shops, and called for reducing the closure time to just two days.
Mohammed Al-Shuha, head of the Irbid Chamber of Commerce, said that thousands of shops in Irbid have been ticketed and that this was a source of concern for shop owners, especially tickets for environmental violations, he said.
Shuha said that among the violations issued were for shop owners placing a cardboard box outside their shop to collect rubbish, or washing their shop floors, adding that the multiple violations issued by multiple authorities has exhausted shop owners, many of whom have been pushed to close. He said that the chamber has contacted the concerned authorities to find a solution to the problem before it gets out of hand.
He said that all the chamber’s options are open in the event there was no response to shop owners’ concerns. Among the options are the closure of shops for one hour in protest, amid the increase in ticketing of shops for violation, Shuha said, adding that the sector was on the verge of collapse.
He said that these are the worst times for the sector, adding that before any defense order is enforced there should be a grace period of some weeks to allow shop owners to prepare themselves.
Shuha said that Irbid has 16,000 trade establishments, and claimed that the vast majority of their owners and staff have been fully vaccinated with the exception of a few, calling on authorities to give them some time to get completely vaccinated before issuing tickets. He said that shop owners used to get ticketed if a customer in their shop failed to wear a mask, now only the customer gets ticketed.
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