One of the great plagues of Jakarta is illegal parking, which is a huge contributing factor to Jakarta’s greatest plague, traffic.
Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama has attempted to battle illegal parking by installing electronic parking meters in a few areas and having police deflate the tires of parking violators. When the tire deflations proved ineffective, he pushed for a pilot program to get illegally parked cars in certain areas towed consistently.
After that initial program proved successful (and lucrative), the government is now ready to put some serious money into a tow truck fleet that will take away the rides of parking scofflaws and force them to pay Rp 500,000 penalties to get them back.
Specifically, the government has allocated a budget of Rp 48 billion (~$3.4 million) to purchase 19 new tow trucks to take on illegal parking.
“We will certainly continue to curb illegal parking in all regions of the capital intensively. Therefore, we are purchasing additional tow truck units,” Ahok said at City Hall on Thursday as quoted by Antara.
Ahok added that the trucks would be acquired using the city’s e-catalog procurement system, which will help speed up the purchase by eliminating the need for a tender.
Currently, the Jakarta Department of Transportation Jakarta only has 42 tow trucks, so 19 more will be a significant expansion of the fleet.
“Inspections will be carried out intensively in all areas, particularly those prone to illegal parking. If there are people who have a vehicle but do not have a garage and park their vehicle haphazardly on the road, we will tow those as well,” Ahok said.
Not only does illegal parking contribute to the macet, it also gives power to preman (thugs) who “authorize” illegal parking in some areas. So more tow trucks means less traffic, less thugs and more money for the city in the form of penalties. Win-win-win.
