PETALING JAYA: Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ) is looking to terminate the services of the city’s parking concessionaire.
City councillor Billy Wong said MBPJ had issued a legal letter early this year requesting due payment from Godell Parking Sdn Bhd.
He said the parking concessionaire, which signed a 20-year agreement with MBPJ in 1999, issued a counter claim.
“One of their reasons for withholding payment was the lack of enforcement by MBPJ and that not all parking lots were fully surrendered to them,” he said.
Wong pointed out that the council could not take enforcement action if the machines were always faulty and some of those broken machines were found in areas that had been handed to the concessionaire.
Most commercial areas are facing faulty machine issues including SS2, Damansara Uptown, Old Town and the Sunwaymas Commercial Centre.
According to MBPJ, there are over 700 parking machines in the city to cater to about 21,000 parking bays and today, more than 50% of them are faulty.
The parking concessionaire is contracted to pay MBPJ a monthly rental fee of RM37.45 for each bay.
MBPJ does not get any portion of the parking fees from bays on public roads, be it the hourly ones or even the season monthly passes.
A check at PJU1/3A further found that the parking ticket machines along that whole stretch of road were out of order and some car owners resorted to placing a note stating “Parking meter broken” on their car dashboards.
“Our first step now is to terminate the concessionaire and take back parking management, which may involve usage of coupons or even mobile applications,” said MBPJ councillor Daniel Lee.
Lee, who was also visiting public streets to check for broken parking meters, said MBPJ was now in the process of deciding the next action to take and the council would engage other parking vendors to propose ideas.
“If the ideas are good, then we will consider working together with the parking vendors but this is still in discussion at the moment,” he said.
He added that MBPJ was hoping to make the final decision by next week but for now enforcement officers had already been given a list of faulty machines and they would not be issuing summonses where there were faulty meters.
The contractor is responsible for parking machine maintenance and must ensure all parking bays in their care are properly outlined.
Godell could not be reached for comment.
