Retailers against planned bylaw for parking fee levy

JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Retailers' Association rejected yesterday the City Council's plan to prepare a bylaw authorizing the municipality to collect fees from the owners and managers of buildings with private parking lots.

The association's chairman, HJA Sinungan, said the fee collection would further burden those who have already been slugged by the monetary crisis.

"We are really against it," he said. "Besides, it's against the 1998 instruction issued by the minister of home affairs in March on the cancellation of collection of some taxes and levies, including parking fees from private building owners."

Sinungan said the cancellation of parking fees was good news for the association's members.

"It helps reduce our costs. We spend lots of money on the maintenance of the parking lots, employees and other expenses, which are becoming higher and higher compared to the revenue we get."

Association members are required to hand over 25 percent of their parking revenue plus 10 percent in value-added tax and 6 percent in income tax to the city administration, he said.

The administration had, at first, followed the instruction by canceling the collection of parking levies, he said.

"But, in April, the governor approved the city council's proposal for the recollection of parking levies under a different scheme."

Earlier this month, the association sent a letter to the home affairs minister which expressed its objection to the bylaw plan, Sinungan said.

"All members of the association have also been instructed not to give away part of their parking revenue to the administration until the central government finds a solution to this problem."

Separately, City Councilor Ali Wongso Sinaga defended the bylaw plan and the city administration's right to collect parking levies or taxes.

The administration has the right to manage the parking business in Jakarta, Ali, who is head of Commission D for Development Affairs, said.

"These rights are assured by the laws and regulations, including 1992 Law No. 14 on Traffic and Public Transportation and 1996 Decree No. 22 which handed over some of the central government's rights to manage traffic-related matters to the city administration."

Ali said the Jakarta governor had the right to approve and cancel permission given to a private party to manage parking lots in the latter's area as well as set the parking fees to be charged to the customers.

The proposed bylaw will change the status of the city's parking management agency into a city-owned company with greater rights and responsibilities, including parking lots which are managed by private companies, he said.

"The planned bylaw will give the administration greater access to supervise and control parking and traffic-related matters in Jakarta, including checking on parking management conducted by private companies."

Ali, who was chairman of the council team to promote and develop the draft bylaw, also hit out at the association's members, accusing them of deliberately trying to avoid paying parking levies to the administration.

"Do you think they pay the full 25 percent in levies to the parking management agency? No, they do not. They pay less than 10 percent."

Ali said many managers of private parking lots had also traversed the regulation on parking fees by charging their customers much more than the tariffs set by the governor.

Many charged the customers Rp 1,000 for the first one or two hours parking when it should only be Rp 500, he said. (gis/cst)