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.