Giving us the slip: Yes, they are ripping you off in charged parking

Pay only Rs5 for a motorcycle, Rs10 for a car in CDGK areas, Rs30 in cantonments, DHA.

KARACHI:

Let’s get this straight once and for all. You only need to pay Rs5 to park a motorcycle and Rs10 for a car in the 21 areas controlled by the city government. The charges are higher, however, for Defence Housing Authority and cantonment jurisdictions.

The private contractors are ripping people off across the city by employing a combination of muscle, rude behaviour, threats to tow your vehicle and tampering with the slips. They make a killing by charging up to Rs20 for a motorcycle and Rs40 for a car.

“In this country, everyone is stealing money. Why are you hounding me? I’m just making a few rupees,” said a contractor at the Bin Qasim beach park when questioned by this newspaper. Others argued that the rates were not adjusted for inflation.

In most cases, the fee slips do not have the official rate printed on them and even if they do, these men cross the amount out with a marker.

Contractors hired by the Cantonment Board Karachi (CBK) are no different from those in the city government. They are supposed to charge no more than Rs20 for vehicles parked for up to three hours. An amount of Rs30 can only be charged if a person intends to park the vehicle for an entire day. However, the contractors are only issuing Rs30 slips at all CBK parking sites.

The main purpose of hiring contractors is to ensure that vehicles are parked correctly so that traffic jams can be avoided. “[But] contractors are only interested in making money. They even allow vehicles to be parked on roads, hence choking them,” said Traffic DIG Khurram Gulzar. He feels Tariq Road and areas around Empress Market are worst affected by this practice. “Contractors want a car to occupy less space, so they can make more money.” Gulzar added that the absence of checks and balances has made it possible for contractors to allow people to leave cars in no-parking zones as well. “We do not provide any token but in case the vehicle is towed by the authorities, we’ll take the responsibility of retrieving it,” explained Ghulam Hussain, an individual hired by the contractor to work at the parking site adjacent to Trinity School.

There is an apparent conflict within the city government as well because no-parking areas near Zainab Market have been contracted out.

As with most under-the-table businesses in Karachi, this one too thrives because of the big money involved. The city government and other authorities make money be auctioning off yearly contracts for charged parking. The bids, such as the one for Tariq Road, can go up to Rs12 million.

When the city government and the contractors sign an agreement they also fix the rate for charged parking. “They had agreed to the specified charges,” explained the director for charged parking at the Karachi Municipal Corporation, Raza Abbas. “We didn’t put a gun to their heads to sign the contracts. It was an open auction.”

If a contractor is found to be violating their terms and conditions, the KMC has the right to cancel the contract and forfeit the guarantees. But it seems that there is no system to monitor whether the right rates are being applied at charged parking sites. “As of now, we haven’t taken action against anyone but we will start conducting raids as we have been receiving a lot of complaints,” said Abbas.

And the contractors are not the only ones in on the game. A senior cantonment official informed The Express Tribune that officials from the administration cut them some slack in exchange for bribes. “At the end of this fiscal year, June 2011, the contractor of Zaibunnisa Street had only paid half of the total amount which was Rs10 million,” he said. You can only imagine where the rest of the money goes. Certainly not in keeping the streets clean and paved, which is where Karachi’s residents would like to see their money put to use.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 10^th, 2012.