C

ity councilors have challenged the administration’s plan to ask consumers to pay for parking insurance, saying parking lot operators should be responsible for any losses and damages inflicted to vehicles in their care.

“Since a Supreme Court ruling recently obliged a parking operator to compensate a consumer whose car was lost in a secured parking lot, the insurance fee should naturally be the parking operator’s responsibility,” the chairman of City Council Commission C overseeing the budget Ridho Kamaluddin told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

The Supreme Court recently ruled that parking operator PT Securindo Packatama Indonesia had to pay Rp 60 million (US$6,600) to Anny R. Gultom and Hontas Tambunan in compensation for their car, which was lost in a Central Jakarta shopping center.

In response to the ruling, Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo said the administration would revise the 2004 gubernatorial decree on parking, but warned that it would still likely wind up burdening consumers because operators would inevitably charge higher parking fees.

However, despite the speculation surrounding the parking insurance issue, the city administration had not yet submitted a proposal to revise the gubernatorial decree,
Ridho said.

“So I don’t know the range of a potential parking fee increase yet,” he said.

Ridho said taxes from off-street parking contributed Rp 19 billion ($2.1 million) a year to city coffers.

“Operators should at least share the insurance costs rather than pass them off on to their customers,” deputy council speaker Triwisaksana said.

Triwisaksana also revealed that the City Council had just finished a revision of the 1999 parking bylaw last month, which stipulates that 20 percent of a vehicle parking ticket goes to the city administration.

The administration also receives full fees from on-street parking revenues managed by the administration’s parking unit, Ridho said.

Separately, the Jakarta branch of the Indonesian Consumers’ Foundation (YLKI) agreed with the idea of parking operators assuming insurance costs, member Tulus
Abadi said.

“Whatever the form, whether the parking operator cooperates with building managers, what is most important is that the consumers’ vehicles are protected from any damages or loss,” Tulus said.

That would be a win-win solution for all parties, considering many people in Indonesia did not have car insurance, he said.

Tulus added that apart from incorporating insurance, the administration should better manage
its own parking lots, especially those under their direct supervision, specifically citing city-owned market operator PD Pasar Jaya as an
example.

“Compared to the number of vehicles in this city, the administration’s income from parking is really quite small, only around Rp 19 billion a year on average, due largely to the huge number of illegal parking operators,” Tulus said.

This dilemma has often forced the city administration to subsidize parking operators, he said.