Post News Network
Bhubaneswar, April 18: The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) and private parking contractors in the city are taking citizens for a ride by hiking the parking fee without displaying the civic body’s notice to inform people about the hike.
BMC has also not published notices in newspapers to inform people about parking fee hike — a move that is being defended by corporation officials.
According to the notification, people now have to pay Rs 5 to park two-wheelers instead of the Rs 2 that they used to pay earlier. For four-wheelers, the fee has been raised from Rs 10 to Rs 20 for four hours. For heavy four-wheelers, the parking fee has been hiked from Rs 15 to Rs 25 for the same duration.
BMC manages around 50 parking lots in the city. These include parking lots managed by a few private contractors engaged by the civic body. However, a majority of the contractors are not displaying notices of the fee hike while the parking tickets also show the old rates.
BMC deputy commissioner Subhranshu Mishra said there is nothing wrong in collecting the fee on the basis of the new rates but said that stern action would be taken against contractors who have not displayed the notification about the hike in rates at their counters.
“It is not mandatory for us to publish notices in newspapers to make public aware about the revision of parking fee. However, parking managers should display the notice prominently, failing which they may be slapped with show cause notices,” he said.
“This is not the right way of revising the parking fee. People can obviously pay more fee but there should be proper notification of tariff,” said Manoj Samantray, a VSS Nagar resident.
“Parking contractors are mostly goons and do not comply with guidelines laid out by BMC,” said Prabhat Bhoi, a Chinamaniswar local.
