Hyderabad: Free parking zones in the city are being illegally converted into paid parking lots with the support of MLAs and corporators. There’s a local mafia that operates with the connivance of officials, leading to crores of losses to vehicle owners.
The Abids police arresting 16 people on Thursday for collecting parking fees in the free parking zone at Jagdish Market is only the tip of the iceberg, say sources.
The GHMC and Traffic department have jointly identified over 20 free parking zones in each of the 25 police stations in the twin cities, however citizens are not mostly not aware of these.
Abids traffic inspector Sham Sunder said, “The free parking zone is located opposite Taj Mahal Hotel- Abids, around 200 two-wheelers of shop owners and customer are parked here. Following complaints, the city law and order police booked cases under Sections 384 (extortion) and 420 (cheating) against Masi and Pervaz who were charging parking fees in a free zone for over two months. They were earning approximately Rs 1,000 per day.”
Citizens are unaware of the free parking zones and continue to pay. Wide publicity is needed for this. A.V. Ranganath, South Zone DCP, Hyderabad traffic police said, “We have already fixed boards mentioning the same in a few places. We have identified spaces where people can park without hindering traffic on the roads. We have installed boards at 20 to 30 places and our target is more than 100. Contractors are also charging more than the permissible amount and are harassing vehicle owners.”
“We have received several complaints on this. We have thus come up with free parking zones in the city.” The department, meanwhile, has appealed to the general public to park responsibly. “Citizens should use this space properly and not park at unnecessary places which will affect traffic. They should give opportunity to other vehicle owners and not park for long hours. We have also requested some agencies to employ guards for the vehicles and also to regulate parking,” the officer added.
Parking lots flout many rules
A parking tender depending on the area and space costs bet-ween '6 and '8 lakh. Sources in GHMC, however, claim that contractors will have to pay '5 lakh in bribe to GHMC zonal commissioners and corporators or local MLA. While parking contracts are supposed to be renewed in August, GHMC generally allo-ws contractors to op-erate beyond the official contractual period.
As per records, there are roughly 50 authorised GHMC parking lots in the city. However, operators at many of these parking lots are known to flout the rules and encroach on land not allotted to them.Tenders for private parking slots see stiff competition. A lot of contractors are said to be benamis or sub-contractors. “It is true that they do have connections with corporators and officials. Also, the contractors are mostly repeated every year… almost the same people win the bids every year,” said a senior GHMC official.
Close to one in three contractors obtained the lease without depositing the mandatory 50 per cent of the amount this year, said a GHMC insider. A zonal officer from GHMC said, “At times, political or official pressure prevents lower rung officials from penalising defaulters.”
