Harare doubles parking fees

MOTORISTS parking anywhere in Harare city centre will pay $20 an hour from 1 June, double the present charge, with no reduction for those parking in peripheral areas.

The same $20 an hour charge applies for both street parking and casual parkade and car park parking, with contract parking off the street also doubling in price, to as much as $1 200 a month for a reserved bay.

In an interview yesterday, City Parking public relations manager Mr Francis Mandaza said the new parking fees were required to meet “the increased operational and administration costs obtaining in the inflationary environment that we operate in”.

The reviewed parkade tariffs, including value added tax are as follows; unreserved $1 000 up from $500, reserved $1 200 up from $600, new or tag replacement $800 up from $400 and causal $20 up from $10 per hour.

A motorist Mr Tashinga Meza said the increase was reasonable.

“The new fee is rational considering that City Parking used to charge us $US1 per hour and the proposed $20 is far below that now considering the current inflationary environment.

“All things being equal for the company to remain sustainable the fee is reasonable,” he said.

Another motorist Mr Oscar Jinga, however, questioned the timing of the increment.

“The country is battling the coronavirus pandemic and increasing fees is a miscalculated move. People are battling financial challenges at the moment,” he said.

City Parking recently went 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, available on Google playstore, has a facility that alerts motorists when a ticket is about to expire so that they top up without having to interrupt their activities.

Many cities around the world use high parking charges to reduce congestion, hoping motorists will either not enter the city centre at all or use public transport.