As a local council in Malaysia, you need to be more creative when it comes to growing your revenue. Of course, because, the economy of late, or rather annually, is pretty harsh to everyone including you, this is not an excuse to punish law-abiding citizens when running their daily routines.
For example, an elderly couple went for a quick breakfast at a restaurant and they completely forgot about paying the parking fee of RM0.60 per hour. Five minutes later, came this one person. A family man, with his t-shirt and kain pelekat (sarong), rushed into the same restaurant to buy breakfast for his wife and kids back home. He spent 30 minutes finding a parking spot and properly parked his vehicle inside the box. But, he didn’t pay the parking fee thinking that the breakfast-grabbing session would only take 10 minutes. Both scenarios were in Shah Alam, Selangor.
Those patrons weren’t aware that the local council’s parking enforcement officers were actually nearby. When both people went back to their respective vehicles, they saw a ticket there at the wiper waiting to be collected—warning them to pay immediately or face harsher penalties.
Of course, there is a law—giving you as the local council, a full authority to collect the parking fees once their vehicles are parked at the designated places. For both scenarios that happened before my eyes that day, they are at fault. They are completely at fault for not paying their dues whether they purposely did it or not. It’s the law.
As far as the law part is concerned, there is no question about that. But wouldn’t be more humane to put more focus and effort on penalising those vehicle owners who park illegally first? I noticed there were several vehicles nearby that were parked near junctions and in the parking lots designated for motorbikes, but didn’t get the ticket. Is this some kind of game that you simply hunt the ‘low-hanging fruits’? Personally, the way I see it, those illegal parking fellows deserve the ticket more than those who park their vehicles in the designated box.
In addition to that, there are many other ways local councils like your organisation can achieve their revenue target if somehow you are stuck at the formula of how to generate more revenue out of the people. While I don’t get any allowance or payment for these ideas, let me share one anyway. The rest, these local councils can figure out their game from there.
The one easy way is by investing some money in CCTVs, and then installing them all over the state end-to-end—from junctions that have traffic lights and no traffic lights, to commercial and residential areas. These are the benefits you will get on top of penalising those who park their vehicles illegally.
- You will find lots of easy prey—the motorbikes who never respect traffic lights. Send your traffic tickets their way. You will be surprised, there are cars too. You will see the revenue growth almost immediately.
- The other easy prey is the motorbikes too. They simply park their bikes in the shops corridors and walking alleys. Fine them, fine them all.
- The other one is also the motorbikes. You can quietly see how they ride their bikes—pretty much an outlaw kind of type. They make illegal U-turns, they ride their bikes against the traffic and worse, they are racing with one another.
- If you can find selected cramped areas where there is a lot of illegal parking due to lack of proper parking areas to cater for the people there. Those CCTVs will definitely capture them all—in visuals. To send them the parking tickets is going to be a piece of cake for you.
- There are areas where illegal immigrants can own bikes and even cars without being detected. Find those people from the CCTVs installed and take action.
These are just five suggestions you may want to consider. Of course, the results will be better if you have CCTVs, or else you need to get the enforcement people to do it manually which is counterproductive. Give it a shot at the suggested ideas. And, please be a little considerate and leave the law-abiding ones alone.
