CHENNAI: A private company that has taken contract of maintaining the parking space at Marina beach since 1987 was on Monday booked for collecting excessive parking fare from a city resident.
The Marina police filed the FIR after M Chandra Sekar, also an activist and head of an anti-corruption group Arapor Iyakkam, posted the issue in social media, which drew the attention of a senior police officer.
According to him, the staff of Tamil Nadu Ex-Servicemen’s Corporation Limited (TEXCO), who has the contract to man the parking lot since 1987, demanded `20 when he parked the car on Sunday evening. But the corporation has allowed the contractor to collect only `5 per vehicle parked for under six hours. The fare can go up only if the parking time exceeds six hours.
“We have asked the zonal officer concerned to conduct an enquiry and submit a report,” said a senior Corporation official, when contacted by Express over the issue. Earlier this year, a similar complaint was launched against the same agency and an staffer was sacked.
TEXCO was given the responsibility of handling 143 parking lots in the city and several complaints have been registered against them at the Corporation’s online grievance portal. While talks of not renewing their contract was in the air for quite sometime, nothing has materialised so far, said another Corporation official.
The official added that on an average, TEXCO earns `6.5 lakh every month through these contracts and profit is shared in the ratio of 30:70 after meeting all the direct and indirect expenses. In most cases the attendants do not provide receipts and pocket in the cash once their target is achieved. For his part, a parking attendant said that many spend hours in the beach and drive away without paying the fee.