Retailers against planned bylaw for parking fee levy

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)