City Parking goes digital

HARARE City Council’s commercial entity, City Parking, has gone digital following its introduction of a mobile self-service application, ParkAssist, which allows motorists to pay parking fees from wherever they are without physically engaging parking marshals.

The application is available on Google playstore and is initially offering Ecocash and OneWallet as payment platforms.

It has a facility that alerts motorists when a ticket is about to expire so that they top up without having to interrupt their activities, unlike in the past.

In the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, the application promotes health safety standards as there will no longer be need for physical contact with parking marshals.

The mobile application platform checks and verifies compliance.

The development comes after motorists raised numerous complaints about parking marshals deserting their bays, resulting in motorists getting delayed for business engagements.

In some instances, motorists failed to locate the marshals and ended up not paying, only for them to have their vehicles clamped.

City Parking public relations manager Mr Francis Mandaza said the application was now ready for use.

“ParkAssist is a self-service mobile parking application that allows motorists to pay for parking without the intervention of the parking marshal,” he said.

“This saves the motorists’ time. After having paid and parked for a particular period of time, the application alerts the motorists when the ticket is about to expire, allowing them to top-up from anywhere.

“It is cashless and payments are only done using mobile money platforms. It encourages social distancing since payments are done remotely.”