Councilors want a say in city parking management

Councilors want a say in city parking management

JAKARTA (JP): The City Council has joined in the process of vetting private contractors that will have the right to manage Jakarta's lucrative parking facilities.

Council chairman M.H. Ritonga said, however, that he would insist on looking at the proposals of more than one contractor before making his mind up about which of them would be proposed to the City Administration.

Ritonga said the council will recommend one firm after intensively studying the various proposals.

The City administration has already set up a team to look into the matter. It received proposals from at least 19 private contractors on how they intend to manage the parking facilities in the city. Out of these, only one company survived and the other 18 have withdrawn their proposals.

The lone survivor, PT Ikabina Karya Sukses, has already made presentations before the city municipality office and council.

Ritonga, who met with Ikabina executives at his office last week, however, did not appear too impressed.

He said on Thursday that he was encouraging other bidders to come to his office and make their proposals known.

He also denied earlier press reports suggesting that he had given his endorsement to Ikabina during his meeting with executives of the company. "I never said that their concept had been approved, they just wanted to begin presenting their proposals to us," said Ritonga, a former city police chief.

One of Ikabina's controversial proposal is to make the parking receipts carry attractive door prizes. The idea behind this is to encourage motorists to insist on getting receipts from parking attendants, and therefore allow the authorities to better monitor the revenues collected from parking.

The parking management is currently handled by BP Parkir, an agency under the municipality. It has been widely criticized for consistently failing to meet the revenue targets set by the city administration amidst allegations that some of the funds had been tampered with.

Ikabina is no longer the only bidder for the project.

City Secretary Harun Al Rasyid said early this week that the city administration is still reviewing proposals from four parties, namely BP Parkir, PT Ikabina Karya Sukses and two other firms, whose names are not being released.

The bidding is still open for other interested firms, he said.

Harun expressed his disappointment that the proposals only concentrate on the revenues that the bidders hope to raise and contribute to the administration's coffers.

He indicated that what he wanted was an overall concept on parking management, including its function as part of easing traffic congestion, and the security aspect.

Ikabina Karya Sukses is reportedly offering to contribute Rp 25.9 billion each year to the administration.

This is in sharp contrast to the Rp 14.6 billion target that the administration has imposed on BP Parkir for the 1994/95 fiscal year which ended on March 31.

The final amount collected for the fiscal year is still not known but in the first nine months of the year, BP Parkir only managed Rp 9 billion. (bsr)