Parking ticket perforation will be postponed

JAKARTA (JP): The head of the City Revenue Office, Fauzie Alvie Yasin, said yesterday that due to technical problems his office was still unable to carry out a gubernatorial decree requiring parking tickets to be perforated.

An article of the decree, which was issued on Feb. 14, requires his office to perforate parking tickets to check that parking taxes received are consistent with the number of tickets issued. Now, not all parking tickets are perforated, especially those issued by the management of the privately-owned buildings which manage their own parking lots.

"The problem is that we do not have an integrated perforating system," Fauzie said.

Fauzie said he realized that his office would not be able to perforate all the parking tickets distributed in lots throughout the city if it stuck to the method it presently uses.

When asked whether he had informed parking attendants about the decree, Fauzie said,"Later, we will inform them and train them how to collect parking fees effectively."

Before informing them, according to Fauzie, it is necessary to count how many parking attendants are operating in the city as well as the number and the exact capacity of all the city's parking lots.

For that purpose, Fauzie said, his office will develop a pilot project which is planned for August of next year.

There will be one pilot project for each of the city's five mayoralties. Fauzie said that, in carrying out the project, his office will cooperate with the mayors' office, the city public order bureau, the city spatial planning office and the bureau for the development of the city's economy.

Parking fees serve as one of the main sources of the city's originally earned income with the number of vehicles registered at around 2 million.

Last year, however, the City Revenue Office received Rp 8 billion (US$3.7 million) in parking taxes, falling short of its Rp 9 billion target.

In response to Fauzie's announcement, Helmy A.R. Syihab, the chairman of the City Council's Commission C on finance and economy, said he was disappointed over the delay in carrying out the decree.

"This delay might give the impression that the decree was not implemented because the present 'leakage' in tax collections was acceptable," he said. (arf)