City councillors reject new parking deal

Kampala.

City councillors yesterday opposed a decision by Kampala Capital City Authority’s directorate of revenue collection to mark out car parking slots on narrow and congested inner-city streets.
The 760 new parking spaces, which are managed by Multiplex (U) Ltd, are located in Kampala Central and Makindye divisions.
However, councillors said they were gazetted without the consent of council.
Mr Moses Okwera, a councillor on the physical planning committee, said some of the spaces were gazetted in illegal places.
“The 100 parking spaces in Bugolobi were irregularly created because some of them cover the parking meant for Bugolobi market. Multiplex and KCCA must halt the process before the situation gets out of hand,” Mr Okello said.

Move halted
Daily Monitor has established that the operations of Multiplex (U) Ltd in Bugolobi, were halted yesterday by area councillors, pending council’s resolution on the same.
The spaces were gazetted in January and subsequently advertised in the local dailies on January 31.
However, Mr Samuel Serunkuuma, the KCCA deputy executive director, wondered why the councillors were up in arms over the deal yet the same council resolved to devise means of increasing revenue.
“We shall not entertain situations where we make resolutions here and you later on make a U-turn. The parking spaces were created to boost our revenue as an institution,” he said.
Last year, KCCA increased street parking spaces to plug their funding gaps.
According to the new rates, car owners are required to pay Shs1,000 per hour, and this only applies to the first two hours of uninterrupted parking in the same space.

If one stretches their parking by 30 minutes, they pay an additional Shs800.

Until last year, street parking was Shs400 per hour.

After the review of the street parking rates last year, KCCA said that their revenue from street parking would shoot to Shs1.6b up from Shs140m.

While addressing Journalists shortly after announcing the increment in street parking fees, Jacob Byamukama, the KCCA director in charge of roads, said that there were at least 45,000 parking spaces in the city.

With the additional 760 parking slots that were recently gazetted, the number will now rise to 45760.