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BMC pays staff Rs 1 crore to man parking lots, earns just Rs 50 lakh

Officials feel that this is a serious misrepresentation of figures as A ward is the most frequented by vehicles with parking needs. Moreover, it got no response in the bidding of these sites to be given on contract a whopping four times. BMC will now come up with the bidding for the fifth time.

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A car park in Kala Ghoda
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The penny wise pound foolish attitude of the civic body while managing pay and park lots in A ward (Colaba to CST) has left it neck deep in losses.

Instead of the usual method of hiring a contractor for the job, the BMC came up with what it thought would be a cheaper alternative. It employed its own staff to man 29 of the total 43 car parking sites in the ward. The plan however has backfired badly. While the civic body is spending close to a crore to pay 548 of its staffers to manage these parking lots, it is making just half of the amount, a little more than Rs 50 lakh, in revenue.

Officials feel that this is a serious misrepresentation of figures as A ward is the most frequented by vehicles with parking needs. Moreover, it got no response in the bidding of these sites to be given on contract a whopping four times. BMC will now come up with the bidding for the fifth time.

Three years ago, the civic authorities started receiving complaints of high-handedness of private contractors in handling parking and over-charging in A ward. After that, it was decided that these parking lots would be manned by civic authorities themselves on an experimental basis instead of issuing a new contract replacing the blacklisted agency. Therefore, for the past two and a half years, BMC has been manning 29 premium parking lot sites in A ward which are full of vehicles at any given point of time.

There is serious dearth of space to park vehicles, especially with traffic police being more vigilant and civic rules of street parking becoming stricter day by day.

BMC formed five teams comprising 398 labourers pulled out from the maintenance department of all the 24 wards to maintain the 29 pay and park sites. Moreover, it pressed into service another 150 private security staff to keep vigil on the vehicles. While the salaries of 358 permanent civic staff per month goes up to Rs 1 crore, BMC also pays Rs 14,000 per person per month to the security staff each month which amounts to Rs 21 lakh.

"When these parking lots were given to contractors, BMC used to earn a revenue of Rs 1 crore without spending a penny from its pocket for the staff and maintenance. But now even after the parking lots are full and have up to 2,200 vehicles at a time, how is the civic body facing losses? People come and go. So the count can be much more than this. Where does the money go? Why there is no scrutiny of bill books and the income,"said a civic official who did not wish to be named.

The premium sites handled by BMC include: Gateway of India, Colaba Causeway, NCPA, Hutatma Chowk, Vidhan Bhavan Marg, MG Road, Regal Cinema and Bombay Hospital among others.

Interestingly, civic sources said that BMC earns revenue of Rs 50 lakh each month as against the heavy establishment cost.

"BMC spent Rs 36.30 crore on staff and private security in last 30 months and received a revenue of Rs 15 crore," said a civic official. Sources also claimed that civic authorities got a bad response in the bidding process because it has put a condition of paying a hefty deposit of Rs 1 crore for particiapation. "This time the deposit amount will be 90 per cent less than the earlier amount," said the official.

Gyanmurti Sharma, chairman of the law committee, said, "There is a cartel of contractors and a few civic officials conniving with vested interests. I will ensure that an investigation is done thoroughly." She added that there is a case pending in court which challenged the BMC's decision to ignore the policy of giving 50 per cent of parking lots to open category and divide the remaining 50 per cent between women self-help groups and umemployed youths.

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