An elderly woman has said she feels "victimised" after receiving a £100 fine for parking her car "one inch" outside of a car park bay in Cardiff.
Amal Bafaqih, 85, felt "angry, ill, sick, [and] disappointed" when she received the fine for parking incorrectly in a space in Cardiff Bay Retail Park on April 5 this year.
Letters sent to Amal - who is disabled and owns a Blue Badge - from parking management company UK Parking Control included a picture showing how she had parked her car within a disabled bay. The picture appeared to show the front and back wheel of her car outside of the bay and encroaching on an adjacent yellow box.
But the woman claimed her car was not blocking traffic, nor the adjacent parking bays, and refused to pay the fine. After her unsuccessful appeals, the outstanding debt was escalated to £170 - but she has vowed to fight the matter in court.
The woman claimed her car was not blocking traffic, nor the adjacent parking bays (Reem Ahmed/WalesOnline)Amal, who lives alone in Canton, was shopping for groceries in the retail park, and said she was only there for about 20 minutes. After returning to her car, she spotted the parking fine stuck to her car. She claims until that point she did not realise she had not parked correctly within the bay and unsuccessfully tried to challenge the enforcement officer who had issued the fine.
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Two days later, she received a letter in the post from UK Parking Control saying she'd been fined £100 and that the fine would be reduced to £60 if she paid it within 14 days. After refusing to pay it and unsuccessfully appealing several times, Amal received several letters from UK Parking Control and debt recovery agencies.
"It's ridiculous. It's really ridiculous. For one inch of the road - why?" she told WalesOnline. "Just nearly an inch or maybe less - and [they are] victimising me for £100. I haven't blocked the second car beside me. The yellow box between me and the other car is clear - there's nothing. Yes, fair enough, I shouldn't go on the yellow line - but it is just an inch. And every driver is not going to carry a tape measure, get out of the car, and measure the distance between you and the yellow line. That's ridiculous."
She has vowed to fight the matter in court (Reem Ahmed/WalesOnline)Asked how she felt when she discovered the fine she said: "[I felt] angry, ill, sick, disappointed. Because there is no reason for this nonsense. I'm too old to fight back - I'm 85, I'm not young anymore. 85, sick, I'm diabetic, I have Crohn's - I have too many things, too many disabilities. [I have] arthritis. I feel anger, and I have very high blood pressure."
Amal struggles to walk due to backache after a spinal operation in June, and is now waiting for an operation to get a new knee. "So I'm really kaput. I'm really surviving - not living, surviving," she said. She claimed she had even given her medical records to be considered as part of her appeals. "They didn't care. They don't care a hoot. I am victimised. And I wrote to them - I told them many times. They don't listen. I told them 'Don't expect me to have a tape measure on me every time I drive.'"
Amal, who is a retired psychiatric nurse and has lived in Cardiff since 1981, said she is worried about the same happening to other disabled people. "I want all the disabled people to know what will happen to them if they fall in the same trap," she said. "This has to go on paper for everybody to see, everybody to know. Because I've been quiet for too long."
She has insisted she is not paying the fine and will continue to challenge it. "I'll go to prison, and I'm not paying. Take me to court, I'll defend myself."
UK Parking Control has been approached for comment.
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