The New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA), which provides civic services across the township, on Friday called parking agency representatives to a meeting and told them to ensure that attendants did not overcharge or fleece motorists.
Senior officials have also told the agencies to make sure that only attendants, who have proper NKDA-verified identity cards and uniforms, are deployed at the NKDA-run parking lots.
Metro reported on Friday about the alleged rackets operating in parking spaces across New Town.
A senior NKDA official said they would conduct surprise visits to parking lots in all three action areas to check for violations and instances of overcharging.
At the meeting, the officials have made it clear that if practices like overcharging, not handing out valid parking slips and collection of parking fees from areas that are not designated parking zones are found anywhere, that agency will get blacklisted and barred from collecting parking fees.
The officials have also told the representatives to ensure that no parking fee is collected from a motorist for the first 30 minutes.
“Across all the parking lots, boards bearing parking rates had been put up. We are going to place more such boards at the parking lots,” said the official.
Several New Town residents told this newspaper that they are often forced to pay thrice or even four times the normal parking rates fixed by the NKDA.
There are around 20 NKDA-listed parking zones in New Town.
The parking fees at these lots are collected by private agencies. The NKDA gives the contract to run these lots after floating e-tenders, an official said.
A representative from Ruma Travels, which is in charge of collecting parking fees in front of Nazrul Tirtha, refused to speak on the allegation of malpractice.
Kalyan Bhattacharya, the director of AK Gems that operates the parking lot adjacent to the Tata Medical Center, denied any wrongdoing in his area.
“We are aware that a section of parking agencies are fleecing people,” said Bhattacharya.
NKDA chairman Debashis Sen said all the agencies entrusted with parking fee collection have been instructed to ensure that there are no malpractices involved.
“We will also closely monitor them and multiple teams will conduct regular visits randomly to check,” Sen said.
