Parking touts take city for ride

KOLKATA: If you have parked you car in any of the city's key locations, there is a good chance you have been fleeced. There is an illegal parking racket thriving across the city, under the nose of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation(KMC) and Kolkata Police.
The fake parking lots are everywhere, from Gariahat Road to College Street and JL Nehru Road to Ballygunge Circular Road.There is no way you can tell a fake parking agency from a real one. The only way is to ask the parking attendant to show the license issued by KMC, advised an official. Look around for a KMC signboard displaying the parking rates. If there isn't one, insist on being shown a fee chart issued by the civic body.
"We have detected several such fake parking lots, even on some prime thoroughfares. We request motorists to park only in genuine lots," said member, mayor-in-council (car parking) Rajib Deb.
Sources in the department said that some fake' agencies have been running parking lots in prime locations like Bidhan Sarani, College Street, JL Nehru Road, Asutosh Mukherjee Road (Bhowanipore) Rashbehari Avenue, Hazra Road, Ballygunge Circular Road, Gariahat Road and Hindustan Park. In many other areas, agencies whose contract has expired continue to fleece motorists.
"While some parking lots are maintained by unauthorised agencies, some registered agencies played a trick. They surrendered their licenses to KMC on the plea that they could not run the parking lots due to huge losses, but went back to the same zones and took money from motorists. They refuse to pay the civic body its due share," the MMiC said.
Raids by the KMC parking department revealed that some cooperative agencies were in the racket, running valid parking lots illegally. "The parking lots on Rashbehari Avenue near Deshapriya Park, Hindustan Park, Ballygunge Park, parts of Gariahat Road, Lansdowne, College Street, JL Nehru Road and parts of Bidhan Sarani were running illegally. We conducted surprise visits and called the agencies to the KMC headquarters," an official said.
There are 312 official parking zones in the city, which can accommodate only 7,510 cars a day, according to an official statement issued by the KMC car parking department. This is an insignificant number considering that there are 12.13 lakh private cars in the city. "This is where fake car parking agencies thrive. We don't have the mechanism to check the actual number of cars getting accommodated in the illegal car parking lots," a KMC official said. In an attempt to ward off the problem, KMC has decided to open fresh areas for car parking in the next few months.