21st June 2009 - Bruneians Owe Miri Council RM16,000 In Parking Compound

Bruneians Owe Miri Council RM16,000 In Parking Compound

Some 445 Brunei-registered vehicle owners have owed the Miri City Council RM16,000 in outstanding parking compound since 2002. This was highlighted by Miri's Mayor Lawrence Lai, the Borneo Post reported yesterday.

For the convenience of motorists from Brunei, the council has set up counters at its multi-storey car park during weekends and the public holidays. The counter will open from Sam to 4pm.

Errant motorists owe Miri City Council RM4.4 million in outstanding parking compound in that period of time. The outstanding amount involved 109,44 Malaysian registered vehicles and 698 from other foreign registered vehicles owe RM24,000 in outstanding compound.

Lai thus urged motorists to pay their outstanding compound to the council as parking fees and assessment rates were among the main contributors to the council's revenue. "The council is giving a three-month grace starting May I with a 50 per cent discount to encourage defaulters to pay up," he said.

However, the response has been poor with only RM129,000 in outstanding compound collected in May, he stated, adding that as a last resort the council might take legal action against the defaulters after the expiry of this grace period.

A penalty of RM300 would be imposed on motorists after their cases are brought to court, he stated.

Full news here

My take:

I'm not at all surprised. The coupon-ticketing system has too much discrepancies. If you park properly and mis-scratch the date or time or just made some sort of honest mistake, you get a fine, you have to pay the full fine of RM15! Add to the cost of the coupon with the mistake that would be about RM15.40. If a person did NOT put a coupon, he pays a fine with gross amount of about RM15.

That's 0.40 cents LESS than the person that made an honest mistake!!!!

Sure, you can go to have this disputed, but you'd have to head over to the Council building for this, and when you're there, you have to pay for another parking there! And assuming you DON'T make a mistake there, you have to dispute with the complaints counter, which if they say they can't do anything about it, then you'd have to take it to whoever is in charge of that. Assuming they waive the fine, there's all this cost incurred to your time. It's THAT frustrating. So if you're from across the border it's understandable why you'd just resort to hopping across the border back home instead of having to deal with all these stupid little time-consuming things like us poor locals have to.

However, those who park in yellow lines, or park their cars like an idiot (parking in 2 spots, or even 3, double parking, or improperly - see picture ) will get away with it.

So - tough luck. Perhaps the council should think about some more effective way of promoting things like this.