Faulty paking meter in Jalan 20/14.
PETALING Jaya City Council (MBPJ) is mulling over the fate of a 20-year concession with its parking operator, following complaints on faulty and poorly maintained parking machines.
The concession, Petaling Jaya mayor Mohd Azizi Mohd Zain said, began in 2000.
Motorists in Petaling Jaya, who have to deal with faulty or poorly maintained parking machines, have been voicing their discontent to StarMetro and their assemblyman.
MBPJ has 880 parking machines in its jurisdiction, which are privately operated.
Damansara Utama assemblyman Yeo Bee Yin said 70% of the parking revenue went to the contractor while 30% was paid as rental to MBPJ.
The city council receives RM750,000 in rental per month.
Mohd Azizi said it was the operator’s responsibility to ensure the parking meters were well maintained.
“The parking operator has not paid the council rent for about three months and has been giving excuses which do not hold water.
“I am going to call for a meeting with the operator to find out what the problem is.
“Apparently, they are having business-related issues but I need to meet them first to get to the core of the matter,” he said.
The mayor said he also received a complaint letter from Yeo to review the contract.
There are numerous complaints over the faulty parking machines in Petaling Jaya. A reader said he found faulty meters in PJ New Town, PJ Old Town and Jalan Gasing.
“The contract ends in 2020 and it is not too long from now.
“We will have to look at the legal provisions and clauses in the contract before making a decision,” he said.
The mayor said that parking summons should not be issued to motorists if the parking machines were faulty.
However, Mohd Azizi stressed that there was no blanket rule on the non-issuance of parking summons at the moment.
Enforcement, he said, would still continue.
StarMetro reader Kent Lim, a frustrated consumer had recorded a short video on his ordeal with the parking meters and uploaded it on YouTube.
His personal encounters, of non-functioning parking meters this year, were in Paramount, Seapark, SS2, Sunway PJS8 and Petaling Jaya Old Town.
He complained that when he visited a popular hawker centre in Jalan 20/14 for breakfast, three parking machines there were faulty.
“A senior citizen and I had to walk along that road to check each one of them to see if the machines were functioning.
Mohd Azizi says it is the operator’s responsibility to ensure the parking meters are well maintained and that he is going to meet with the operator to discuss the matter.
“We were later told that only one machine was working but the ticket dispensed was blurry,” he said.
Richard Lim said he visited five locations in the city in one day, and was shocked that none of the machines were functioning.
“It is really strange that all the machines I went to pay my parking fees at, were faulty.
“I was in PJ New Town, PJ Old Town and Jalan Gasing,” he said.
Yeo said the contract with the parking operator clearly stated that they were required to maintain the parking machines for public use.
The parking boxes must also be clearly painted, she said.
Yeo says the parking boxes must also be clearly painted.
Yeo’s visit to Jalan SS 2/75 revealed that some of the machines were faulty and the parking bay markings on the road had faded.
The asemblyman hopes the council will not provide long concessions to future operators.
“If the operator does not want to do the job well, then MBPJ should consider terminating the concession,” she said.
Based on a previous article by StarMetro, MBPJ public relations officer Zainun Zakariah said that under the law, consumers reserved the right to sue the council if they were fined for not displaying their tickets when the machines were faulty or for MBPJ’s failure to provide functioning parking meters.
