New parking vouchers in Brussels City not available in English
Brussels residents can apply for free vouchers for parking spaces online since 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 will discover an information folder in their letterbox on 1 May. This communicated the new parking arrangement. 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 apply for free parking vouchers. To make users sign up and their personal information, sign up their address.
It soon became apparent that the website only used French street names. If you enter your street name in Dutch, you will receive an error message.
Once users secretly 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 vouchers in Dutch.
“It remains bizarre to me that you can’t get information in Dutch in the important and simple information,” says Jan, resident of Brussels-City. “I have already sent letters to the future persons but never get an answer”.
According to Brussels City, the cause of the language issue on the website is a technical problem. Be.Mobile, the company that made the website, would continue the problem. “We are convinced that users cannot order Dutch-language vouchers, they are simply technical problems. This has nothing to do with discrimination,” said an employee who remains anonymous.
Not the first time
This is not the first time that Jan has had language problems. In a number of documents that BRUZZ could see, the use of the Dutch language in official documents proved to be a difficult task for both parking.brussels and the municipality.
Last year, Jan filed a complaint against parking.brussels because three times they were unable to send him a letter in Dutch. Jan had to pay a parking fee, but had already indicated in advance that he would like to communicate in Dutch, which parking.brusels did not do. He invoked art. 58 of the language law, which says involved parties “It is also important for the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of Brussels to be addressed in their language”, says Jan.