The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Parking fee has Numaish visitors fuming

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Monday, Jan 17, 2011
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Parking fee has Numaish visitors fuming

Yogendra Kalavalapalli

For four-wheelers, the fee is Rs. 100, while it is 20-50 for two wheelers

–Photo: G. Krishnaswamy .

At their mercy:Parking lots at the exhibition are charging exorbitantly.

HYDERABAD: What can Rs.100 fetch these days? Well, a Biryani perhaps. Maybe two kilograms of onions. Or about 1.5 litres of petrol, going by the current market price.

But at the ongoing Numaish, a modest space for parking your four-wheeler is all you would manage to get for Rs.100. No less. And if you happen to ride there on a two-wheeler, be prepared to shell out anywhere between Rs.20 and Rs.50.

Vehicle parking at the popular annual fair has become a loot fest of sorts this year. Figures that would put even the upmarket malls in the city to shame, the high parking tariffs are leaving visitors fuming.

“When the parking attendants said it would cost Rs.100 to park our car, we were speechless,” said M. Uma, a first-time visitor to the exhibition. “And, when we protested, we were gruffly told to either pay up or leave.”

Taking cognizance of such issues, MBT corporator from Azampura division Amjed ullah Khan addressed an open letter to the Chief Minister Sunday highlighting the “harassment” by the “parking mafia” on Numaish visitors.

No fixed rates

Surprisingly, there are no fixed rates, neither is there any board displaying the tariffs at the parking lots. As a result, visitors are being forced to blindly shell out the fare being asked for.

It is not that no boards are present. They exist. But the huge vinyl hoardings only announce the presence of a parking lot and, as if justifying the huge parking fees, the amounts coughed up by the parking contractors for the respective slots during the tender process.

Coined ‘Government allotment order', they reveal how the parking spaces at Gruhakalpa, Gaganvihar, Manoranjan Complex of APHB were overbid for Rs.10,10,510, Rs.7,27,200 and Rs.9,85,000 respectively. An APHB spokesperson said its job only rested with auctioning the parking lots and that it had no control over the ‘opportunistic pricing'. N. Vinay Kumar, secretary of the Exhibition Society that conducts the annual exhibition said its mandate does not include monitoring the parking lots apart from the two under its control near Nampally Junior College where the fares are “reasonable”.

Mr. Khan wanted the Exhibition Society to allot parking space for accommodating all the visiting vehicles and that no parking be allowed on MJ Market to Gandhi Bhavan and Ek Minar to Darusalam road junction stretches.

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