City facilities: New parking agreement signed

Lahore Parking Company to take over 50 stands within a month.

LAHORE:

Private companies will be able to bid for five-year contracts to manage parking facilities under a new agreement signed by the Lahore Parking Company, or LePark, and the city government on Wednesday.

LePark officials said that the agreement would supersede an earlier deal which was too restrictive. Under the previous agreement, LePark was not permitted to auction off the parking stands to private contractors.

LePark Managing Director Mian Shakeel said that the company would now be allowed to auction parking stands for five years, allowing the contractors time to establish their operations. They would also have to upgrade and automate the parking stands. Advertisements inviting bids for parking stands would be issued soon, he said, adding that an international bidding contract had been prepared. The terms and conditions for the auction were not designed to bar local bidders, he said, but to encourage reputable firms with experience of handling parking facilities in metropolitan areas to bid. He said local contractors were “only interested in minting money” and so they were “no good for the new system”. He said that around 100 parking lots, comprising Zone 1 (Gulberg), would be auctioned off first to one company.



Shakeel said that under the agreement, 75 per cent of the profits earned by LePark would go to the city government, while the company would keep the rest. The city government would have the authority to decide the parking rates.

LePark aims to take over 50 parking stands from the city government within a month, said other company officials. They would later take over other parking stands in phases.



The agreement does not cover the Lahore Development Authority or the Parks and Horticulture Authority, which will continue to manage their own facilities.

DCO Noorul Amin Mengal, speaking at the signing ceremony, said that the agreement would allow LePark to upgrade the city’s parking facilities and ultimately benefit citizens.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 20^th, 2012.