The city parking unit will ask operators that manage 584 city car parks to display notices on the official parking fees rates on the entry and exit gates to their parking lots to ensure the public are properly informed.
Head of the city parking unit Benjamin Bukit said parking operators would have to display notices about official parking fees, based on the 2004 gubernatorial decree, on car park entry gates and exit gates.
“This is obligatory because the deputy governor has ordered it. If they refuse to do it, there will be sanctions,” he said on Wednesday.
A refusal to give this information on the official fees would mean a breach of regulations, he said.
Benjamin said the penalty for not following the regulations would be three written warnings, then sealing of facilities and revoking of the permit to operate.
He said the parking unit had not fixed the notice format or size.
“The important thing is that it contains the gubernatorial decree that can be seen clearly by people,” he said, adding familiarization with new rules might take two weeks.
Deputy Governor Prijanto said last week that he wanted the public to help monitor the parking fees.
He said by displaying the official parking fees on the gates, people could compare the prices paid.
Tulus Abadi of the Indonesian Consumer Protection Foundation (YLKI) said the notice was a good move in line with consumer rights.
He said possible disputes might occur between operator’s officers and consumers when fees charged did not match official tariffs.
“The public can monitor things actively so parking operators will not charge a tariff without obeying the rules,” he said.
Tulus said the building managements that employed the parking operators should not make much profit from parking because it was a public facility they should provide.
Parking, he said, was part of a system to minimize traffic jams.
“The city should fix the parking fees. The money from parking should contribute to transportation”, he said.
Ferry Dwi Yunanto, the director of PT Icon Indonesia Sejati, which operated a number of parking lots in the city, said he did not mind displaying the notice on his lots because people could then judge if fees were in accordance with the rules.
But he pointed out that customers who were accustomed to using parking with insurance, as his company offered, would not be happy.
“People did not mind when they paid higher prices because we joined parking insurance. But when we decreased the price and dropped the insurance, they complained,” he said.
Ferry said the gubernatorial decree should be revised because it did not protect any possible loss or damage to the parked vehicle.
He said however that if a tariff revision, which was expected by the operators, was approved, the operators should then take the risk to be responsible for any losses.
