City govt loses RP 4.8 billion in parking fees

JAKARTA (JP): The city loses at least Rp 4.8 billion (US$640,000) in potential parking revenue each month due to the critical shortage of authorized parking areas, a city councilor said yesterday.

Ali Wongso HS, chief of City Council's Commission D for development, said the funds ended up in the pockets of illegal parking attendants because of the administration's inability to provide sufficient parking spaces.

"Our official parking attendants can only collect parking fees from vehicles parked in authorized parking spaces on or off the street, which are far less in number than vehicles parked in illegal parking lots," he said.

Official statistics shows there are only 85,770 authorized parking spaces available to accommodate at least 1.3 million private vehicles in the city.

Ali estimated that at least 25 percent of the 1.2 million vehicles unable to find authorized spaces -- around 325,000 -- parked in illegal on-street parking areas usually controlled by local hoodlums.

"Yet, we cannot blame people for parking their cars at unauthorized places and paying Rp 500 to the hoodlums. They would not do that if there were enough legal parking spaces available," he said.

Ali said the city's parking management agency, BP Parkir, had collected only Rp 14 billion of the targeted Rp 25 billion in the 1997/1998 fiscal year that ended last month.

It is projected to collect Rp 12.4 billion from the parking lots for the fiscal 1998/1999.

The highest contributors to the city's parking revenue are private sources, including hotels and office buildings licensed to organize parking services in and around their premises.

Some 71,200 of the authorized 85,770 parking spaces are currently controlled by those license holders.

Parties with licenses to organize public parking lots and services are required to pay 25 percent of their total parking revenue to the administration.

Media reports have alleged that some permit holders failed to confer funds to the administration.

Ali said the administration must improve its parking system by adding more spaces, which would increase its revenue.

"It could establish more parking spaces or take over the handling of existing illegal on-street parking spaces from the hoodlums," he said.

Ali said the dearth of legal parking spaces was also a factor in the city's acute traffic problems.

Traffic snarls are particularly common on busy streets where excessive numbers of vehicles are allowed to park, he said.

The administration should consider constructing multistory parking lots to solve the problem, he said, and could cooperate with the private sector in their development if funding was a problem.

But he cautioned that the handling of revenues should be under the city.

"The management of parking lots must be directly controlled by the governor in order to assure that the revenue derived from the service will go to the state coffers," he said. (cst)