(Podgorica, 10 July 2013) – The Assembly of the Capital City barred MANS from participating in its 33rd session, which will be considering a Citizens Initiative to Halt Parking Charges. This measure was taken after MANS pointed to a series of irregularities and abuses in the work of the “Parking Service” in Podgorica.
Participation in the Assembly’s work was barred allegedly because our complaint was filed apparently after the deadline for NGOs, even though it’s indisputable that we submitted it on time (5 days after the call was made by the Capital City).
For obvious reasons, the leaders of the Capital City’s Assembly illegally shortened the deadline in order to prevent MANS from participating in the upcoming debate on the parking initiative (signed by over 2000 Podgorica residents). It’s clear that the Capital City’s leadership are seeking to prevent MANS from continuing to inform council representative of the irregularities that exist in the Parking Service that were uncovered during our investigation into this institution’s work for 2012.
That is, on the basis of revenues reported by the Parking Service, the amount of parking spots and on the basis of the obvious fact that parking spots are full in Podgorica, we pointed out the possibility that much more money was collected from parking fines than listed in the report.
Concretely, according to an analysis of the report, a single parking spot earns an average of €1.06 a day, which is on average filled for a little more than 2 hours. This means that a single parking spot “earns” seven times less than it could during the day. According to the report, of the possible 17 hours in the day, parking spots are only filled for about two hours (even though everyone knows that the situation is totally different and that the majority of spots are filled during the whole day). Similarly the claim that street parking, paid mainly through SMS, are filled for only two hours is also laughable.
The majority of revenues from parking, which in 2012 totalled €1.33-million, goes towards paying the Parking Service’s employees (that is €1.27-million or 85% of revenues). This situation has obtained since 2007 when the Parking Service was established. The majority of revenues since then have gone towards employment. As a result, and the fact that many people claim the DPS engages in patronage employment through the Parking Service, we suspect that the institution is being used to implement the DPS’ strategy that claims that every job it creates secures four voters.
As further evidence is the fact that only 1.5% of revenues are dedicated for investments, while the earnings and expenses of employees account for over 90%. In 2012, investments totalled some €24,000, while salaries totalled €1.27-million. Even these investments weren’t actually into parking, but procurement for equipment like computers, financial software and AC. Only some €10,000 were spent on the procurement of parking equipment.
In 2011, the Parking Service recorded losses of over €65,000 that couldn’t be covered by the small gains from previous years. If we exclude the donation made by the Capital City, the Parking Service was also in the red during 2012 (by over €20,000). It’s clear that there is no profit from parking and that on the whole the Parking Service and Capital City are losing money. It’s clear that there aren’t any concrete investments in parking services, not to mention the fact that there is no money going to the city budget (i.e. in order to improve the quality of life of Podgorica’s citizens). This indicates that parking charges do not extend to the rest of the city in order to resolve the problem of parking in Podgorica’s core, but in order to introduce further impositions on the population and put pressure on household budgets. For this reason, MANS calls on city councillors to support the Citizens’ Initiative at tomorrow’s meeting in order to eliminate parking fees outside of the city limits.
