Lucrative business: ‘Cantonment boards have no laws to regulate charged parking sites’

The six cantonment boards in the city are all running charged parking business illegally.

KARACHI:

The lucrative business of charged parking seems to have attracted more than its fair share of business moguls looking to make a quick buck. Most of these sites are operating under the auspices of the various civic bodies that manage the city.

There are six cantonment boards functioning in the city: Karachi, Clifton, Shah Faisal, Malir, Korangi and Manora.

The problem arises due to the absence of a uniform policy, because of which the civic bodies are charging different amounts for parking within their jurisdictions.

The Karachi Metropolitan Corporation's director for charged parking admits that this is a serious concern. What is all the more ironic is that some of these cantonment boards may not even have by-laws allowing them to charge for parking sites. "We have requested the commissioner on several occasions to draft a uniform policy for charged parking for all civic bodies." The requests have gone unheeded thus far. Under the prevailing circumstances, it is invariably the citizens who are forced to pay exorbitant amounts to park their vehicles at these sites.

NGO Shehri - Citizens for a Better Environment recently sent a letter to the Karachi Cantonment Board's (KCB) executive officer, the Cantonment Board Clifton (CBC) and the federal ombudsman, seeking details of the by-laws under which they are allowed to charge for parking within their jurisdiction. The KBC and CBC did not even bother to respond while the ombudsman declined to deal with the issue, claiming that the matter was related to the defence of the country. "How is the subject of charged parking sites related to the country's defence?" questioned Shehri member, Raza Gardezi, while speaking to The Express Tribune.

An official of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Express Tribune that the purpose of establishing these charged parking sites was to maintain the smooth flow of traffic in these corridors. The funds generated from the sites were to be used for the development of that particular area. Unfortunately, this has never been the case.

"For instance, a major chunk of Gulistan-e-Juhar and Sharae Faisal comes under the Shah Faisal Cantonment which, despite having taken over the parking sites, leave the development of the area for the KMC," he claimed. Moreover, the civic bodies also generate funds from the push-cart vendors and stalls that are running within their jurisdictions.

"Just the parking site outside the Agha's supermarket generates millions of rupees in revenue," he said. But nobody knows where this money is spent. "What we need is a uniform policy for all civic bodies, in the absence of which these issues cannot be resolved."

What the CBC says

CBC's revenue superintendent Faisal Khan Jadoon told The Express Tribune that in the wake of the bi-furcation of the Karachi Cantonment Board in 1980, the former had notified the CBC to generate revenue from designated parking sites falling within its jurisdiction.

"We are running the sites based on this notification" he said.

The board's vice president Aziz Shurwardi maintained that the CBC's function with regards to charged parking was very transparent. "We publish the tenders and then auction the sites to the higher bidders," he said. Gardezi, however, was skeptical regarding the legality of the notification. According to a survey conducted by Shehri, the cantonment boards have no by-laws or rules that allow them to generate revenue from charged parking.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 9^th, 2014.