Motorists plan protest over Lusaka parking contract 

Wed, 12 Apr 2017 06:13:32 +0000

MOTORISTS in Lusaka plan to hold a protest against the memorandum of agreement between Parkrite and Lusaka City Council following the revelation that the local authority is not benefiting from the arrangement. 

Last year hundreds of suspected PF youths and some bus drivers besieged Lusaka Civics Centre and staged a protest against the increment of parking fees from K2.00 to K5.00.

In an interview with the Daily Nation, Ms Charity Bwalya said the council should rescind the MoA with Parkrite because there were no tangible benefits and the parking fees were too high.

She said LCC could manage the system without involving Parkrite because it was losing a lot of money and motorists were benefiting nothing from the parking management system.

A bus driver from Soweto market Benson Mwangala said bus drivers and other motorists were planning to hold a protest at the civic centre to force the council to cancel the MoA until some amendments were made to the agreement. Mr Mwangala said it was wrong for the LCC to award the parking rights to a foreign company whose interest was making profit and not to offer the services to the people as agreed.

“If the council will not resolve this issue with Parkrite we will stop paying parking fees because we are not benefiting at all and the investors are just after our money” he said.

He said despite the agreement the city was still congested and the company did not provide parking spaces like they promised and now the situation was getting out of hand, especially in the central business district (CDB).

Last week during the council meeting in Lusaka, councillors challenged the finance and legal affairs committee to go back and scrutinize the draft working contract between the two partners because the local authority was allegedly not benefiting from the parking management.

The councillors demanded that the council should engage Parkrite and agree on the sharing of the revenue on gross takings instead of the net profit which was 30 percent.

The councillors have also questioned the accountability of the money being realized monthly from the two partners because the council had not been given the agreed percentage on the pretext that Parkrite was making losses.

In February Parkrite Zambia said it made over K900,000 over a period of three months through the 5,000 available parking spaces as well as a minimal ones found at Kamwala second class trading area.

Parkrite chief executive officer Withls Masunda said his firm netted a total of K970,000 from last year to January this year, of which K180 ,000 was realized in November while in December  it collected K270,000; and K500,000 was netted in January.

But Lusaka Mayor Wilson Kalumba defended Parkrite, saying the company was not collecting revenue in all income points such as reserved parking areas which the council had already collected in advance.