Parking attendants print coupons, fleece motorists with 5x actual fees

Kolkata: Away from the glare of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation officials, several car parking agencies are printing coupons and forcibly collecting extra parking fees from car owners. The matter was noticed following a drive in some prime parking zones across the city. According to rules, the agencies can no longer collect cash by offering coupons after the introduction of an app-based fee collection system.However, unfazed by the civic body, parking attendants at Jawaharlal Nehru Road (Chowringhee), Park Street, Camac Street, and Theatre Road have been demanding Rs 50 per hour from motorists for the past couple of months. Tapas Ghosh from Fern Road, who was exiting the parking lot between Dorina crossing and Lindsay Street that can accommodate 70 cars at a time, said on Monday he paid Rs 50 per hour, the same rate that he shelled out multiple times earlier as well when parking his car on JL Nehru Road.The attendants, dressed in true blue shirts and navy-blue trousers, acknowledged they did charge Rs 50 an hour from motorists, but if someone offered to pay Rs 40 an hour, they accepted it. "Getting a parking slot here is difficult. Usually, people queue up to park. Most of them don't mind paying a little more for the service," said an attendant. The attendant conceded that they were being provided with printed coupons for collection of parking fees. "We know that coupons are not acceptable once the new app was introduced. But we can't help it. We are making our customers understand that the app-based collection system has fallen flat," said the attendant on duty opposite Oberoi Grand.The cooperative agency that controls most of the prime parking lots in central Kolkata, including Chowringhee and Dalhousie Square, said that it asked its members to collect Rs 20 per hour parking fee from motorists and that those who demand more will be reined in. KMC officials on Monday insisted the legal parking fee was Rs 10 per hour and that it would launch a crackdown against those extorting more from motorists.A TOI survey has found parking attendants demanding Rs 50 for an hour from motorists on JL Nehru Road opposite Grand Hotel. If a motorist asks them to display the KMC rate chart, the motorist is denied a space. The rate goes upward after evening.Several motorists TOI spoke to said they were forced to park on Chowringhee and pay five times the KMC rates, as all other parking lots in the area have ceased to exist. Police have not turned the place into a no-parking zone, but hawkers have taken over all the space on Bertram Street, Humayun Place, and Lindsay Street.According to a KMC official, of the parking lots in and around New Market, the sanctioned lot on Bertram Street can accommodate 40 cars, Humayun Place 15 cars, and Lindsay Street 30 cars. Instead, fewer than 20 cars can park on these three streets now. As a result, the entire pressure is on Jawaharlal Nehru Road, which has a parking space for 80 cars. So, growing demand for car parking on JL Nehru Road has led to the birth of fake agencies that have now started operating unauthorised parking for cars on the opposite flank.