Parking attendants to wear Javanese-style uniforms

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In a bid to further showcase the city’s special character in daily life, the Surakarta municipal administration is mulling over a decision to replace parking attendants’ standard orange uniforms with Javanese-style sorjan shirts, gombyong loose trousers and iket samen batik bandanas.

Deputy Surakarta Mayor FX Hadi Rudyatmo said that apart from increasing the brand of Surakarta, the Javanese-style uniforms were also expected to be able to improve parking attendants’ attitudes.

“Wearing such attire will elevate the social standing of parking attendants, which in turn is expected to make them behave better and more politely, especially when they are on duty,” Hadi told reporters after briefing a forum on parking bylaws at city hall on Wednesday.

He said the cost of the new uniforms for some 3,500 parking attendants across the municipality would be fully covered by the city budget. The total budget required to implement the plan is estimated to reach Rp 350 million (US$37,000) as each complete uniform is predicted to cost Rp 100,000.

This cost, according to Hadi, would not be a burden for the municipal administration considering that the city’s income from parking fees alone had already Rp 1.9 billion as of the second week of July. The city hopes to reap a total of Rp 3 billion from parking fees this year. “Branding efforts have to reach all levels of the community and not just the upper ones. By wearing sorjan, parking attendants will not be looked down upon anymore,”
he said.

Hadi added that the administration would only be able to realize its plan by 2013 at the soonest, as it still needed to draft regulations and mechanisms to govern the plan’s implementation.

“I think there will be no problem with it,” head of the Municipal Transportation, Communication and Information Agency’s parking technical management unit (UPTD), Anindita Prayoga, said.

She also underlined the role of the community in general in helping to change the attitudes of parking attendants by obeying parking regulations. She said complaints about the behavior of parking attendants had almost all referred to illegal parking attendants.

“When you see a ‘No Parking’ sign, please do not carelessly park there,” Anindita said.

Illegal parking, according to Anindita, had allowed irresponsible and unscrupulous individuals to function as illegal parking attendants. Illegal parking also often causes traffic congestion because the areas are not designed for parking purposes.

She added that the UPTD, in cooperation with the police, would take stern action against illegal parking attendants operating in the city.