Illegal parking fee

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Parking ‘fee’

I have gone to the huge City Government Park in Clifton (previously known as Funland) a couple of times in the past, but on a recent visit I was surprised to see a man collecting parking fee of Rs 20 from motorists. The receipt he gave me simply said ‘Clifton Parking’ without indicating which government department he represented. When I pointed this out to him, he said the money was being collected for the benefit of the police. The security staff at the gate told me that this man had suddenly appeared a couple of weeks back and started extorting parking fee.
I have no objection to paying the parking fee if it is going into government coffers, but obviously this man is doing something illegal. There are at least a thousand cars between 2:30 pm and 11:00 pm (the timings for collection of this so-called parking fee) on Saturdays and Sundays, and half that number on Thursdays and Fridays. This scam needs to be investigated and the crooks involved punished severely.

SHAKIR LAKHANI
Karachi
Daily Times, January 05, 2010