Parking agency in cahoots with 'hoods'

JAKARTA (JP): To increase the city's parking revenue, the local authority plans to cooperate with unofficial parking attendants who have control of one-third of street parking here and offer them a shared account mechanism, an official said on Wednesday.

The proposed mechanism is part of a new partnership program with unofficial parties in collecting parking fees, deputy head of the City Parking Agency Sukri Bey said.

He said there were 517 streets where parking fees were collected, but the agency only controlled 344 of the streets.

"Other 173 streets are still under the control of 'hoodlums'," he said.

Streets controlled by unofficial attendants include Jl. Matraman in East Jakarta; Jl. Tanah Abang Dalam in Central Jakarta, as well as those in the Senen and Sawah Besar areas in Central Jakarta and Pancoran Glodok and Roxy business areas in West Jakarta.

According to Sueb, unofficial parking attendants collect between Rp 400 million and Rp 500 million per month in parking fees.

It is impossible to immediately rid the streets of the hoodlums, he said. Therefore, the authorities will approach them in order to gradually phase them out.

He said the city earned some Rp 10.5 billion from its Rp 12 billion revenue targeted for the 2000 city budget.

He also said the city was planning to tax businesses as much as 15 percent of their parking revenue collected for off-street parking, which is handled by business centers. City law No. 5/1999 on parking will be revised to accommodate the plan.

So far, the private sector has not objected to the tax imposed on private parking revenue because the businesses can set their own parking fees, he said. The city administration does not agree with the private sector's demand to set its own fees, but it will allow them to charge between Rp 1,000 and Rp 3,000 per hour, instead of the current Rp 1,000 per hour.

Meanwhile, the head of City Council Commission D for development affairs, Sayogo Hendrosubroto, said the council would make a regulation on city parking management to enable better control of parking revenue.

The city administration allows private parking operators to assist in parking management and operations on the capital's streets. (04)