Last deadline: ‘End parking woes in three months or go home’

CM Shehbaz suspends Lahore Parking Company board over poor performance

LAHORE: The Punjab chief minister has sacked the 11-member board of Lahore Parking Company (LPC) and given the firm a three-month deadline to improve its performance or face an inevitable closure.

Shehbaz Sharif ordered the closure of the company during a meeting at 180-H Model Town on 27 December on its poor performance. In another meeting at 96-H Model Town on December 30, where the CM joined via video link, he withdrew his decision and gave the firm three months to address the parking mess in Lahore, according to the minutes of the meetings.

LPC’s acting CEO Usman Qayyum was, however, unaware of the development or any such decision of the Punjab chief minister. He confirmed Shehbaz expressed his annoyance with the company for not failing to introduce rotary parking and establishing parking plazas.

An official told The Express Tribune the Lahore Parking Company had failed on all fronts as it was more focused towards generating revenue and less towards addressing parking issues. In multiple meetings with the chief minister on traffic jams, failure of addressing parking issues have been discussed in detail.

Earlier in July, Shehbaz suspended the then CEO of the company for failing to show any improvement.

The officer said the LPC was working on behalf of the City District Government Lahore and was supposed to enforce parking laws and abolish all illegal parking lots.

After the LPC was established, the district office of public facility for parking was made dysfunctional to allow the company to take over the operations. But, he added, the firm failed to check any activities, allowing illegal parking operators to thrive on their own rates and rules.

Let alone illegal parking lots, the LPC even failed to take over the legally established parking lots of Lahore for a long time from private contractors, the officer alleged.

In a major faux pas, the LPC-operated ‘state-of-the-art’ automated system at Liberty Parking had failed to perform on October 26, 2012 during the inauguration ceremony. To save CM Shehbaz from embarrassment, the system had to be manually operated to allow his vehicle to pass through.

MNA Kiran Dar, a member of the outgoing LPC board, said the CM wanted a rotary parking system to be installed forthwith especially after a private construction company had installed a rotary parking on Ferozpur Road close to his residence in Model Town.

The acting CEO said the company would install a rotary parking on Ferozpur Road near Ichra Bazaar and five more such facilities would be installed across Lahore to address the parking issues.

Asked how five machines capable of handling 60 cars (12 cars each rotary) could address the problem of the entire city, Usman said these rotaries were being installed on experimental basis. “If proven successful, more rotaries will be installed throughout the city,” he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 4^th, 2017.