KUWAIT CITY, Feb 5: The project “I Pledge”, which is part of our awareness campaign for people to reserved parking lots for the disabled, comes in handy since in Kuwait there’s always a problem with the rights of the disabled when it comes to the car parking lot, said Dr Al-Ajmi, College of Administrative Sciences Dean, University of Kuwait, as he spoke Tuesday at the launch of a smart phone car parking system for the disabled dubbed “I Pledge” at the College of Business Administration, Kuwait University.
The launch was done under the patronage of Dr Rashed Al-Ajmi with the participation of other university officials and a number of non-governmental organizations associated with helping the disabled.
The project, part of the graduation works of its originators Farah Al Fadhalah and Aliyaa Al Zamil, both Management Information Systems (MIS) Majors at Kuwait University College of Business Administration, is meant to make access to reserved car parking lots easy for the disabled in the university through the use of a smart phone application that opens the entrance via remote control to the area.

It is a “first-of-its-kind” project that has not been tried anywhere in the Middle East. The project, designed and paid for by the university, works through the smart phone and starts with the download of an application which is used to open the entrance to the reserved parking lot for the disabled in the university by remote control. The application is provided for every kind of mobile device that has an app store so it can be downloaded for immediate use by the disabled. The project is designed to benefit all forms of disabilities, but wheel chair-bound disabilities stand to benefit the most, at least for the time being.

The launch of the project also aims to throw the spotlight on the need for motorists to respect and not infringe on reserved parking spots for the disabled. Therefore, with the initiation of this system, we’re building a brand name called “I Promise” an awareness campaign for people to promise not to breach the reserved parking lots for the disabled in the university, said Farah Al-Fadhalah. As part of the pledge not to infringe on the disabled car parks, people were made to sign on a big screen at the event promising never to trespass on those parking lots.

Farah said the project which is part of their graduation and a culmination of the good relationship the two originators cultivated with the disabled community and philanthropic companies could be improved upon in the near future depending on the public reviews on its performance, merits and demerits.
Since we’re not engineering students but MIS majors, we had to read and know more about networking to be able have a grasp of the system, how it works before having an engineering company design it for us, noted Farah. As to what prompted them to think about a project of that nature, Farah said “The university and for that matter Kuwait has given us a lot so we also thought we had to come out with something novel that will be a permanent feature in the university so that our names will for a long time be in the university’s history books”.

Meanwhile, Nasser Al-Tamini, social network supervisor of the Voluntary Newspaper group, one of the many entities that pitched stands at the event launch site to help in the awareness campaign for the disabled, said the main aim of his group is to participate in awareness campaigns to shine the spotlight on the needs of the disabled which includes reserved parking for them. He added that as part of their campaign, the group also has a vigorous information campaign online that exhorts people not to always look at the disabled with sympathy but look at them as individuals with full potentials.
The project “I Pledge”, which is part of our awareness campaign for respect for reserved parking lots for the disabled, comes in handy since in Kuwait there’s always a problem with the rights of the disabled when it comes to the car parking lot, said Dr Al-Ajmi. Since this is the first of its kind in Kuwait, hopefully it can be replicated by all major parking lots in the country to protect the disabled from having their reserved parking spaces breached, added the dean as he signaled a disabled-driven Mini Cooper through the entrance to the parking lot as part of the demonstration.