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. Herald
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