Brussels, (Brussels Morning) – Brussels residents can apply for free vouchers for parking spaces online from 1 May. However, it is not possible to enter street names in Dutch on the parking brussels website. The vouchers themselves are currently only available in French. “It is important for the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of Brussels to be addressed in their language”
The inhabitants of Brussels-City discovered an information folder in their letterbox on 1 May. This communicated the new parking regulations. The document mainly focused on the new resident and parking cards and contains more information about the parking plan.
In this information brochure, the municipality refers to a parking.brussels website, where residents of Brussels can request free parking vouchers. To do this, users must sign up and fill in their personal information, including their address.
It soon becomes apparent that the website only accepts French street names. If you enter your street name in Dutch, you will receive an error message.
Once users decide to enter their street name in French, it is noticeable that the vouchers are not available in the two languages. There is currently no way to obtain the vouchers in Dutch.
“It remains bizarre to me that you can’t get crucial and simple information in Dutch in the capital,” says Jan, resident of Brussels-City. “I have already sent letters to the authorised persons but never got an answer”.
According to Brussels City, the cause of the language issue on the website is a technical problem. Be.Mobile, the company that created the website, should fix the problem soon. “We are aware that users can’t order Dutch vouchers, it’s just technical problems. This has nothing to do with discrimination,” said an employee who prefers to remain anonymous.
Not the first time
This is not the first time that Jan has had language problems. In a number of documents that BRUZZ was able to view, the use of the Dutch language in official documents turned out to be a difficult task for both parking.brussels and the municipality.
Last year, Jan filed a complaint against parking brussels because they were unable to send him a letter in Dutch on three occasions. Jan had to pay a parking fee, but had already indicated in advance that he wanted to communicate in Dutch, which parking brussels did not do. He invoked art. 58 of the Language Act, which says that the parties involved (in this case the government) must use the official language(s) of the Region. “It is also important for the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of Brussels to be addressed in their language,” says Jan.
