A caller to the weekly phone-in programme “Talk to Mayor” complained on Friday that parking attendants were charging Rs 50 an hour in Kalighat and Rs 100 an hour near Kidderpore’s Fancy Market.
The approved parking rates for four-wheelers is Rs 10 an hour between 7am and 10pm and Rs 30 an hour between 10pm and 7am. The corresponding rates for two-wheelers are Rs 5 and Rs 10.
The caller also told mayor Firhad Hakim that the attendants were nonchalant when he told them that he would complain to the mayor and asked him to do so if he so wished.
Hakim promised to send a team to the two places and find out who were overcharging car owners.
If the allegation is found to be true, the KMC will lodge a complaint with the police. The KMC’s parking department, too, will take action against the agency responsible for managing parking on that road, the mayor said.
The Telegraph reported on October 10 that with Durga Puja only days away, the parking mafia were back to fleecing car owners. This newspaper was charged Rs 50 an hour in Gariahat on a Saturday evening and Rs 40 an hour on Park Street (opposite Starbucks) on a Saturday afternoon.
While listening to the man’s grievances, the mayor at one point said he wanted to fix the issue of parking but was denied the opportunity.
“This money could have come to the KMC’s coffers. I wanted to create a system but was not allowed,” he said, while referring to overcharging by attendants. He did not elaborate on who stopped him and how.
When prodded on the issue later, he said: “No one has the right to charge more than the stipulated rates because the parking rates cannot be raised.”
The KMC had raised the parking fees in Kolkata in April but was forced to roll back the hike within seven days of the revision.
The hiked rates were rolled back on April 7 evening after Trinamul Congress spokesperson and state general secretary Kunal Ghosh told a news conference that chief minister Mamata Banerjee and the party did not approve of the increase.
Ghosh said the chief minister had been unaware of the rise in the parking rates before it was implemented.
The rolled-back rates for cars, which were in effect from April 1 to 7, were Rs 20 an hour for the first two hours, Rs 40 an hour from the third to the fifth hour and Rs 100 for every hour beyond that.
Kolkata police have put up banners in many places urging people to dial 1073 if they are forced to pay more than the legal parking rates.
The caller also said the attendants were not using point of sales (POS) machines and did not give any receipts. The civic body has made it mandatory to pay and accept parking fees digitally — through POS machines — from April 1.
