Municipality studying parking fee proposal

JAKARTA (JP): The municipality has yet to decide on a better system to collect parking fees, because various proposals from the City Council are still being studied.

The proposals, which include offers to manage the city's parking fees by private companies, are not that easy to decide on, Deputy Governor for Economic and Development Affairs, Tb.M. Rais said.

He said yesterday that the city must be cautious in selecting the offers.

"We have to consider that the private sector is, after all, seeking profits, while we have to serve the public," Rais said.

In August of last year, the administration rejected offers by the privately owned PT Ikabina Karya Sukses, which proposed to make the collection of parking receipts attractive by providing motorists with opportunities to win prizes.

One of the chronic problems of parking fee collection is the reluctance of parking attendants to hand over receipts in return for fees from motorists.

On Jan. 18, also last year, private firms pulled out of a bid to manage the lucrative, but high-risk project to manage the city's parking fees.

Meanwhile, Council Speaker M.H. Ritonga urged executives to decide as quickly as possible on the best parking system from the proposals.

"The municipality should study the several concepts and have the courage to decide on the one it thinks is the best," Ritonga said.

The city could then implement the system through a trial period, Ritonga said. In any case, the decision should be made immediately, he said.

The City Parking Agency has been under fire for years for its inability to collect fees according to expected targets.

Only 65 percent of the expected fees were collected in the last fiscal year of 1994/1995. Expected revenue for this fiscal year is Rp 16.3 billion (US$6.9 million) for the city, with around 1.9 million vehicles.

A councilor once estimated some Rp 43 billion per year could be collected from only 400,000 cars parked once a day, with fees of Rp 300 each.

Rais also said the city would soon propose a draft on new parking fees to the council.

On Wednesday, the head of the council commission in charge of revenues, Helmy AR Syihab, said many parking tickets issued by private parties do not have official serial numbers and are not perforated by the parking agency.

This leads to losses of billions of rupiah in city revenue, he said. According to a 1994 rule, private firms issuing parking tickets should pay 25 percent of their income to the City Revenue Agency. (anr)