People's incomes 'considered in parking fee hike'

JAKARTA (JP): People's ability to pay will be taken into account in passing a new rule on parking fees, Governor Surjadi Soedirdja said yesterday.

After attending a ceremony to install security officers for May's general election, Surjadi said the planned increased was still under deliberation.

He was responding to the uproar over a draft rule to increase parking fees to up to Rp 5,000 a time in limited areas without parking meters, or for the first hour in areas with meters.

Surjadi said the figures had not yet been decided.

The areas where the higher fees were to be applied would be selected carefully, Surjadi said.

A source said the limited areas where the highest fees would be effective would be announced in a governor's decree. The selected areas would take into account the most congested sites, he said.

Easing the traffic jams caused by street parking was the main aim of the plan, the source, who asked not to be named, said.

"The parking rule we have is 17 years old, and the parking fees have to be adjusted," he said. Under the 1979 rule parking fees are Rp 300 but in practice people pay at least Rp 500.

Motorists said Wednesday the planned new fees were too high. A manager of a shopping center was worried the number of customers would decrease while another said customers would not be affected. Consumer advocate Tini Hadad said parking fees should cover insurance to guarantee the safety of parked cars.

Meanwhile city secretary Harun Al Rasyid confirmed that the draft, if passed, would put into effect fees from Rp 1,000 to Rp 5,000, the Antara news agency reported yesterday.

He called for better management of parking lots and better control over parking attendants collecting parking fees at illegal parking lots.

Many roads not designed for parking are parked in, causing traffic jams, Harun said.

The head of the Parking Agency, Soemaryono, acknowledged earlier many parking areas were unlisted, referring to unofficial sites where fees paid were not passed on to the city.

For several years councilors have criticized the agency's management for its low contribution to the city budget, comparing revenue from parking fees with that of other cities with less vehicles.

In the 1995/1996 fiscal year the agency collected Rp 11 billion while the target was Rp 16 billion.

The head of the council's Commission C for revenue, Helmy AR Syihab, had said the agency should be able to collect Rp 43 billion a year from only 400,000 cars parked once a day with fees of Rp 300 each. (anr/jun)