It looks like Sandiaga Uno, running mate of Anies Baswedan (the presumptive winner of the April 19 election and future governor of Jakarta based on unofficial quick count results), will not be continuing current governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja’s Purnama’s efforts to modernize parking in the capital through the installation of parking meters. The reason?
In his opinion, parking meters are not part of Indonesian culture.
Sandiaga shared this opinion while at the offices of software developer Bubu.com in South Jakarta yesterday. Bubu has produced an app called “Jukir” (a play on the word juru parkir, or parking attendant) that lets users pay for parking and reserve spaces at partner parking lots.
The developers said they already have partnerships with the government in Bekasi and South Tangerang and were lobbying for their system to be expanded to Jakarta because the parking meter system was ineffective.
“Yes, parking meters are not our culture,” Sandi said in response, as quoted by Kompas.
After the meeting, Sandiaga elaborated by saying that parking meter systems were only suitable in countries with “individualist” societies like the US.
“If we see somebody here parking we want to help, and we want to pay those that help, because there are many jobs needed,” Sandiaga said.
The vice governor-elect also said that, like ojek (motorcycle taxis), juru parkir were a form of “local wisdom” that could never be eliminated from the community.
The current juru parkir system has its roots in the era of Jakarta Governor Ali Sadikin, who was the governor of the capital from 1966-1977. He was the one who originally gave street thugs (preman) control over parking in the city in order to make it into a much-needed revenue stream. The plan, which was successful for a time, was for the thugs to split their profits with the government.
Later administrations gave up on the scheme, but by then the preman already had a stranglehold on illegal parking. With a lot of money at stake, they have become adept at avoiding police or paying protection money to the right people so they can keep their lucrative businesses intact.
It is estimated that a jawara (a kind of head preman) with 10 parking attendants working under him can make up to Rp 500 million per year. Ahok claimed the government was losing out on as much as Rp 19 trillion per year due to illegal parking, noting that parking meters that had been installed on Jalan Sabang in Central Jakarta could rake in as much as Rp 12 million per day. Before there were any parking meters, the average was about Rp 500,000 per day.
To be fair, the small number of parking meters that were installed by Ahok’s administration always suffered from problems due to too many people paying the official parking attendants (hired and paid well by the government to help people to use the machines and enforce the time limits) directly, leading to revenue loss.
Whether requiring everybody to download and use a smartphone app just to pay for parking makes sense, we’ll leave to you to decide. Sandiaga said he has not yet officially determined if his administration will use the app or parking meters, demurring that further study was needed.
But what do you think of his statement that parking meters are not part of Indonesian culture? Here are some reactions from Twitter, let us know your thoughts in the comments section.
https://twitter.com/Rockintan/status/859607714200117249
Welcome Jahiliyah.. jakarta back to Preman again 😁👏 RT @kompascom: Sandiaga: Parkir Meter Bukan Budaya Kita https://t.co/PNv59XNd6d
— RUDI VALINKA (@kurawa) May 2, 2017
https://twitter.com/BULLFRONT/status/859565785039028224
