Kamashtak is a new website by a group of people aiming to document the various parking violations causing traffic jams around Beirut by taking photos of the violating vehicles, tagging them on a map, and finally posting them on the website along with the violation type and the vehicle’s plate number. It’s a bit similar to Cheyef 7alak initiative by LBC Group, except that Kamashtak is limited to parking violations and is not crowd-sourced.
I don’t know how effective will this initiative be. I mean Cheyef 7alak is already quite popular but did it change a thing? Thousands of photos have been uploaded so far and we still suck ass at driving… talk about wasted efforts. Anyway if you ever see the above sticker on your car, just know that you’ve done something wrong!
I personally think it is important to change the perception of people that treating the community as a jungle is not ok.
I upload the effort, and wish they recruit more people and scale the idea, not just in Ras Beirut.
I applaud* the effort.
Hello !!!
First of all, thanks for the mention and the article about our campaign.
Honestly, as a group of young citizens we are tackling these few law violations as a door to open other topics. As you know, “some” Lebanese people are so good at interpreting laws and rules like it suits them and it is usually a pain in the neck trying to make a point about what is legal and what is illegal. This is why we limited this campaign to violations that cannot be argued, violations that are physical and have a clear impact on others, like when you park your car in the middle of the street or on sidewalks and you cause traffic jam or deprive pedestrians from their space.
We do hope to transform our campaign to a crowd-sourced one, we already receive dozens of request from volunteers asking for stickers, we strategically decided to do it ourselves the first few days to set the tone and nature of reports, and because by watching and following Cheyef 7alak we learned that this can go no where if people start thinking it is cool to become popular and tagged on Facebook. (We witnessed a few motorcycle drivers performing and video shooting each other so they can post their oen videos on Cheyef 7alak)
Breaking the law is not cool, a message for those that break it and also an invitation for those that suffer from the violations.
Also our map will hopefully be a good tool for ISF and traffic control that should give random statistics on size a frequency of these violations organized by type of violations, place, and time!
FYI the campaign is not a one day initiative, it will cover most of Beirut and the crowds can take over after that:)
Thanks again
Kamashtak Team
http://www.Kamashtak.com
http://www.fb.com/kamachtak
Great idea.
I don’t understand why would anyone publish a website half done!?
Love the idea and the effort behind it, but i hate the execution and presentation!
Sorry for the rant, just hate coming across broken websites!
what is difference then chayef halak
Hi
I follow this blog but it is the first comment that i write. The good thing in my opinion and i hope im not fooled, is that the young lebanese are waking up and taking initiatives in all sectors, as anti racism, animal protection, environmental activities like the cycling tour in DT and so on which means that they are taking the job which our governments should be doing, Kamashtak is a simple and cute thing that even doesnt harm the people doing the wrong things but hope it is enought to make them wake up and understand and change mentality wihtout paying money for every law violation because unfortunately the police in lebanon do seasonal things like radars, seatbelts etc and then everybody forgets about it. This country is beautiful but we have to take care and improve alot because its getting worse and worse…
thank you for this blog i really like it because its simple and cool;-)!
Omar from Switzerland
Before your read down, I like to follow rules but I won’t accept the idea that someone will just popup and put my car plate on website for any violation. he is into violation as well breaching law and publishing a personal info isn’t a right to anyone.
This is police work and not personnel or group of young people who has time to look after others. You have problem then you have to believe in your resources and have confident in yourself to call a policeman for such violation.
secondly before going into the problem and publish it find the solution. publishing a problem isnt a solution which reflects the mentality of young immature action. I am 100% sure that you have made a violation once in a while and you gave it a right move because it was you. A problem without solution is not what we want.