City parking management comes in for criticism

City parking management comes in for criticism

Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

For the 30-plus years of its existence, city-owned parking
management (BP Parkir) -- assigned to oversee the parking
business in the capital -- has been suffering deficits as its
spending has always exceeded its revenue.

Last year, for example, the management contributed Rp 14
billion (US$1.4 million) to the city coffer, compared to its
total expenses of Rp 17 billion.

Corruption, including within BP Parkir itself, has often been
blamed for the situation, but a senior official, who has worked
for 35 years in the parking business, Alamsyah, has his own
theory.

"In the field, we have to deal with the members of local gangs
and traffic police, who often use the parking business as their
cash cow," said Alamsyah during a hearing with City Council
Commission B for budgetary affairs on Thursday.

Alamsyah, BP Parkir's South Jakarta branch head, acknowledged
that most parking areas across the capital were currently under
the control of gang members, who had reigned the areas even
before the establishment of BP Parkir.

"Time went by and those gang members, who during the early
years submitted the lion's share of their daily earnings to the
city coffer, slowly started to keep the money for themselves as
the city administration paid little attention to their welfare,"
Alamsyah said.

Alamsyah said that, today, city parking attendants had to
respect gang members' control over parking areas.

"Worse still, many traffic police often come to ask us for a
pack of cigarettes," he said.

"You can calculate yourselves how much parking attendants have
to spend, for instance, if a police patrol car stops by and all
three policemen in the car ask for Dji Sam Soe cigarettes, priced
at Rp 12,000, or equal to parking six cars. It means they lose
their earnings from directing 18 cars into spaces," Alamsyah
said.

BP Parkir head Yani Mulyani concurred with Alamsyah, adding
that some parking attendants even collected parking fees from
street vendors occupying parking spaces.

"We are aware of many illegal parking activities with illegal
parking attendants controlling parking spaces, or cars parked on
restricted roads. But, we must confess that we are powerless in
this situation," Yani said.

Yani said the management had not a single tow truck to remove
cars parked in restricted areas.

"We don't have personnel to enforce the traffic regulations.
We don't have civil investigators with the authority to take
legal action against violators either," he said.

The management has 2,500 workers, most of whom are non-
contract workers, while 800 civil servants are tasked with
collecting parking fees from the attendants.

The management manages on-street parking spaces across the
capital, which can accommodate 16,000 cars in total.

Ben Sitompul, deputy chairman of Commission B said the
commission would form a small team to help improve the
operational activities of the business.

"We are sure the parking business is very profitable and more
cash could be made from parking for the administration," he said.

Another councillor Slamet Nurdin urged the management to take
control of the business, including by employing more attendants
and using more efficient methods to collect parking fees.