Friday November 7, 2008
Coupon parking likely by June
By ANN TAN and WINNIE YEOH
THE Penang Municipal Council is expected to implement the coupon system for parking by June next year.
Council financial management subcommittee alternate chairman Tan Hun Wooi said the subcommittee had approved the proposal in a special meeting held on Oct 29 and it would go to the full council for final approval.
“Once it’s approved in the full council, we will draw up a mechanism and work on the details on how the coupons are going to be sold,” he said when contacted yesterday.
On the appointment of agents to sell the coupons, Tan said he was proposing to reserve some for the disabled people.
On whether there would be a tender calling for agents, he said they had not decided on it and would discuss the matter.
“However, we encourage just about anybody to become an agent so that car owners could get the coupons conveniently,” he said.
On the parking rate and collection time, Tan said they would discuss whether to standardise the rate at 30 sen or 40 sen per half hour and if parking charges should be charged on weekends and public holidays.
Tan said the metered parking system and parking attendant system would be scrapped when the ‘scratch and display’ prepaid coupon parking system was introduced.
“The capital cost for a parking meter is about RM2,000 whereas the coupon system only involves the printing cost.
“We can also avoid vandalism which would save the council a lot on maintenance fees,” he said, adding that it would also be easier to handle parking fee collection.
Currently, there are about 2,000 parking bays in the island using meter parking system and 8,000 parking bays with parking attendants.
Tan said the council was trying to help the 114 legal parking attendants so that they would not lose their jobs after the introduction of the coupon system.
“One option is to appoint the attendants to be coupon agents,” he said.
Asked if it would be a waste to remove all the meters, Tan said the council would either sell them to other municipal councils or resell them at a second-hand rate to the manufacturer.
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