DBKU refutes allegations of private parking fee increase near SGH
KUCHING: Kuching North City Hall ( DBKU) has clarified that private car parking fees in the vicinity of Sarawak General Hospital ( SGH) remain unchanged.
The fee is still RM3 for less than four hours and RM5 for more than four hours of parking time.
“The customers will be asked to pay RM5.30. If you park for less than four hours, you will get RM2 back. However, if you park longer than that, you will have to pay RM5,” DBKU commissioner Datuk Wee Hong Seng told The Borneo Post yesterday.
He said this needed to be known because there has been an article circulating on social media spreading false information that private car parking fees around the SGH area has increased by RM1, from RM5.30 to RM6.36 from Jan 1, 2017 onwards.
“The Facebook page said parking fees in the area have increased to RM6.36 instead of RM5.30. The article started to go viral two days ago.
“I wish to clarify that the news article was written in 2014 and the pictures were taken in 2014. After the news report (came out), we settled the issue in the same year.
“We would like to inform the public that the FB page had uploaded an outdated story which is no longer valid. It is not true that there is an increase in car parking fees in the area,” Wee emphasised.
The said FB page had carried an outdated story from The Borneo Post dated Jan 7, 2014 titled “Errant Car Park Operators Warned”. At the time the article was written, the private car park operator opposite the main entrance of SGH had increased the parking fee from RM5.30 to RM6.36 without the consent of DBKU.
Acting upon readers’ complaints, The Borneo Post went to the ground to see what was actually happening then. After the report was published, DBKU dealt with the operator and since then, the fees have stayed at RM5 and RM3 with an additional RM0.30 charged for goods and services tax (GST).
Meanwhile, Wee said the car park operator concerned did write to DBKU to request for permission to increase fees by RM1 from Jan 1, 2017 onwards but the request had been turned down by DBKU.
“DBKU had rejected the application for the reason that within SGH area, there are a few private companies offering parking spaces and we want the charges to be uniform.
“Another reason is that we are experiencing an economic slowdown. We don’t want to increase the financial burden of patients and their families.
“The third reason is that this is not the right time to increase neither is there a need to increase the parking fee there because some companies there are collecting GST; that means they are making more than RM500,000 per year.
“Since they have been making quite substantial revenues from collecting parking fees, there is no reason to allow them to increase the fees charged,” Wee said.