Civic services: New company to take over parking stands next month

Lahore Parking Company yet to receive seed money, notify MD’s appointment.


Rameez Khan August 26, 2012

LAHORE:


The newly set up Lahore Parking Company is to take over parking stands at Liberty, The Mall, Gulberg’s Main Boulevard and Neela Gumbad from the District Office of Public Facilities next month, The Express Tribune has learnt.


The new company, which was notified on August 11, has been set up to take control of all public parking facilities in Lahore and will seek to make a profit.

So far, the company has held one board meeting where it selected its managing director, Additional Commissioner Dr Usman Ali Khan, its chairman, PML-N MNA Hafiz Noman, and its vice chairman, District Coordination Officer (DCO) Noorul Amin Mengal.

Well placed officials said that there had been no discussion yet between the LPC and the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) over the transfer of control over the three parking plazas run by the latter. Mengal is currently hiring administrative staff for the company, while the managing director-to-be will hire the support staff once he takes charge.

Dr Khan said he had not been notified as managing director yet. He said the Lahore Parking Company was also awaiting seed money of Rs200 million from the Punjab government. The DCO has sent a request for the funding to the chief minister, according to the DCO’s office.

Dr Khan said that after taking charge, one of the first things he would do is to conduct a survey of all the parking facilities in the city to see which needed overhauling. He said that the company would initially take over parking stands at Liberty, The Mall, Gulberg’s Main Boulevard and Neela Gumbad in September, but could not say exactly when.

He said that the company would aim to automate the city’s parking stands. Automation systems have been tried twice before in the city by three different companies, two of which defaulted on payments owed to the city government. He said the LPC would seek to learn why these companies failed before introducing its own system. He said a Turkish company had signed an agreement with the city government to help in this regard.

Dr Khan said that the LPC would initially set up offices at the Town Hall for lack of funding. The Turkish company would also set up an office there. He said that the LPC would seek to establish a proper parking system before aiming for high revenue generation.

He said some parking stands which created traffic bottlenecks in the city would be abolished. He said that there was a dire need to increase the number of parking plazas in the city. He said that they would also mark the boundaries of parking stands so that they could not encroach on other space.

Asked what would happen to the contracts for parking stands only recently auctioned to private operators once the LPC takes over, District Officer of Public Facilities Fahad Anees said that a default clause had been included in the contracts with the operators. He said that two months’ advance taken from the parking stand operators as security deposit would be returned.

Anees said that his office had been informed that the LPC would begin to take over parking stands in September. He said that his office was currently conducting a survey to ascertain the capacity and tariffs at the 354 parking stands in the city. He said that 160 of the 354 parking stands were said to be non-operational.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 26th, 2012.

 

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