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different scene could be viewed on Friday morning along Jl. Slamet Riyadi in Surakarta, Central Java, with parking attendants operating in new uniforms with the traditional Javanese male shirt of sorjan and black blangkon as their headdresses.

The sorjan, which has a lurik motif, comes with a badge bearing the Surakarta municipal administration emblem and the parking area codes according to where the respective parking attendants operate.

'€œ[With the uniform] their attitudes are also expected to reflect the polite culture according to the clothing they are wearing,'€ Surakarta Mayor FX Hadi Rudyatmo said on Thursday evening after witnessing the handing over of the new uniforms to 200 parking attendants at his official residence.

Uniforms for parking attendants have been the concern of the administration in Solo, as the city is also known, because they were considered to play a significant role in the branding of Solo as a city of culture struggling to boost its tourism sector.

Rudy said it was time for the administration to do the branding comprehensively by involving all levels of the community. Grassroots level such as parking attendants, he said, has to be taken into account because they were the first to directly interact with visitors, especially those who came in their private cars.

'€œI am glad and challenged,'€ said Sunaryo, 55, one of the 200 parking attendants who wore the new uniforms on Friday.

Sunaryo pledged to serve motorists more politely to represent the characteristics of Surakarta as a friendly and smiling city.

With the new policy, parking attendants in Surakarta are obliged to wear sorjan and blangkon three times a week. For the rest of the week they are obliged to wear their old orange uniforms.

Head of Surakarta Transportation Communication and Information Agency'€™s parking technical service unit (UPTD), Anindita Prayoga, said that the city had the target of finishing distributing the new uniforms to its 3,025 parking attendants by the end of this year.

She said the distribution was done in two stages. For the first stage 1,400 sets of uniforms were procured with a fund of Rp 182 million from the city'€™s 2013 budget. The rest 1,625 sets worth Rp 190 million would be funded from the budget amendment.

'€œIt has to be conducted in stages because the budget is not small and the making [of the uniforms] also takes time,'€ she said, adding that it was why only the first 200 of them were distributed on Thursday.

She also called on the community to give support to the city'€™s new policy regarding parking attendant uniform so that the expected change in the attendants behavior could also be realized.

One way of doing so is by parking their vehicles on the prepared areas. Otherwise, they would incite the emergence of illegal parking attendants, which might not obey the prevailing regulation both in term of tariff and behavior.

Providing an example, she pointed to the illegal parking that emerged along Jl. Slamet Riyadi'€™s sidewalks which were allocated for pedestrians.

To deal with this, she said, the city would apply more stern actions against those who park their vehicles illegally by sealing the illegally parked cars.

'€œThe policy will start to be effective in October,'€ she said.