Other States - Orissa   

Innovative scheme to end parking woes

BHUBANESWAR: Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has finally woken up to deal with the growing use of public land for parking lots by big business establishments of the capital city.

The civic body has launched an experimental innovative scheme of ‘Public Private Partnership for Parking (PPPP)’ under which unemployed youths could be given charge of collecting parking fees from vehicle users.

As part of the programme, a 600 sq feet land on the western side of Unit II market has already been handed over to a youth club to collect parking fees and deposit half of the earning with the civic body.

“This will be an answer to the parking chaos in the city. Earlier, enforcement on parking of vehicles was clearly missing. Neither we had enough manpower to address the problem, nor could the police administration spare their personnel for the purpose,” BMC Commissioner Aparajita Sarangi said on Wednesday.

The BMC had assessed that on an average 400 two-wheelers were parked daily on that little space behind Unit II market area. “The unemployed youths would give us Rs. 6000 per month to BMC. We intend to experiment the scheme for a period of three months. If it proves to be successful model, we will implement in other areas," Ms. Sarangi said.

The BMC Commissioner said antecedents unemployed youths would be thoroughly verified before handing over public lands to manage parking lots. It was also planned to implement the PPPP in front of big hotels and educational institutions, which had so far been using patches of public land as their own parking space.

"Our another objective is to encourage volunteerism as well as provide unemployed youths earning source through managing parking space," she said. The arrangement was, however, purely temporary in nature and transparency would be maintained in regulating vehicles in those parking places, the Commissioner said.

Though the civic body had created 11 additional parking lots a few months ago, most of those were lying unutilized. Subsequently, two important road stretches were officially notified as no parking zones. But unauthorised parking continued unabated.

In addition to the innovative scheme, the corporation was in process of introducing tow away vehicle to take errant drivers to task.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Students take oath to eradicate poverty
On a grand scale
Promoting Odissi abroad
Cool cats
Coop bank extends term deposit scheme
Cuttack gears up for puja festivities
Landslip hits Koraput-Rayagada rail traffic
BSNL casual workers threaten to go on stir
Assembly pays rich tributes to freedom fighters
Innovative scheme to end parking woes
Devdasi award presented to Yamini Reddy
21 kg ivory seized from national park
Hike in HRA for State employees

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu