Durga Puja is days away and the parking mafia are back to fleecing car owners.
The Telegraph was charged Rs 50 an hour in Gariahat on Saturday evening and Rs 40 an hour on Park Street (opposite Starbucks) on Saturday afternoon.
In both places, the attendants did not give any receipts. They said they had none with them but insisted that one had to pay at the rate they demanded to park a car.
On Friday, a parking attendant on Alipore Road — about a kilometre from mayor Firhad Hakim’s home — asked for Rs 20 an hour in the early afternoon.
Here the attendant produced a receipt with the name of “The Kolkata Municipal Corporation” printed over it. The receipt, however, did not have any name of the parking agency that was managing parking on that road.
Debashis Kumar, the mayoral council member in charge of the car parking department at the KMC, was shown the receipt on Saturday. He said whoever gave the receipt was using the name of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation illegally.
“This is a case of forgery. They are using the name of the KMC without any authority to do so. Any agency with the right to collect parking fees will also print their name on the receipt,” Kumar said.
“Those who were given this receipt should file a complaint with police. If they file a complaint with us, we will forward it to the police,” he said.
But why cannot the KMC act suo motu, Kumar was asked. “If this were an agency that overcharged, we could have taken action against the agency. This is a case of forgery and the police have to deal with it,” he said.
A Ballygunge resident who was handed the forged receipt on Saturday said that the overcharging by parking attendants had stopped or its frequency had reduced for a few months, but the practice of charging more than the stipulated rates has again become routine across the city as Puja draws near.
The overcharging may be uniform but the rates charged are arbitrary and vary from place to place.
When this newspaper parked the car on Park Street on Saturday afternoon, an attendant first asked for an estimate of how long the car would remain parked. When told, that the car would leave by 30 minutes, he did not object.
While leaving the parking bay, the attendant demanded Rs 40. When asked for a receipt, he said he had none. “You will not find a single parking attendant giving you a receipt on the entire Park Street. People who park cars here know what is the rate. In fact, I am demanding less from you. We charge Rs 50 an hour from others,” said the attendant.
Asked why they were not using PoS (point of sale) machines to take the money, he said: “The machines do not work”.
All parking attendants are supposed to use PoS machines that will print a receipt with the entry and exit time of a car and the money to be paid.
The parking rates approved by the KMC are Rs 10 an hour for cars and Rs 5 an hour for two-wheelers between 7am and 10pm.
The rate for the remaining hours is Rs 30 for cars and Rs 10 for two-wheelers for an hour
The next stop was Gariahat.
As the car approached the parking bay under the flyover, opposite Gariahat market, a parking attendant appeared and announced: “The rate is Rs 50 an hour.”
The tone made it clear that if one agreed to pay at this rate, only then they can park the car.
Here too the attendant did not produce any receipt.
