When will motorists demand better treatment at parking lots?

Nairobi Council askaris clamp a taxi on Kimathi Street on January 28, 2016. If you can’t find a yellowcoat, or forget, or think that the place or time you park is exempt (some times and places are), you can be clamped, spend hours finding the process and the person to get unlocked, and have to pay a fine of… several thousand shillings! PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • But as I say, most people get to know the deal, so neither the cost nor the need for guesswork nor the instances of gross injustices for genuine “don’t knows” is the prime cause for concern.
  • The idea that you must pay to park is not intrinsically unreasonable; but the lack of on-site information and signage is extraordinary.  It would be unthinkable in all places north of the tropic of Cancer, and in most places south of it, too.

Formula One racing, the World Rally Championship and off-road “desert raid” events like the Dakar are regarded as the toughest challenges in motoring. Kenya has a match for that in its “Rhino Charge”.

But we have challenges more scary and dangerous than any of those (the death and injury statistics are official and unequivocal) – in our ordinary motoring; and even more jeopardy in an event known as (wait for it)… “Parking”.

Almost anywhere you park today requires the payment of a fee – even in quite small up-country towns where there are usually plenty of empty spaces. 

The concept of this parking tax is common, almost everywhere in the world. What makes our version different, and especially nerve-wracking, is this: In approximately 99.9 per cent of the places where parking fees are charged, and where the penalty for not paying is being clamped, heavily fined and even more heavily inconvenienced, there are no signs – none of any sort – which notify motorists that they must pay, or how, or how much.

Fortunately most people know the answers.  The charge is payable almost everywhere. To a person wearing a yellow dustcoat. The cost ranges unpredictably from Sh50 to Sh300, whether you park all day or for just a few minutes.

UNLAWFUL AUTHORITY

If you don’t know that, or can’t find a yellowcoat, or forget, or think that the place or time you park is exempt (some times and places are), you can be clamped, spend hours finding the process and the person to get unlocked, and have to pay a fine of… several thousand shillings!

Officials pursue the clamping and fine outcome with exceptional diligence, and sometimes expert cunning. And as with so many motoring punishments, the fine is not just money.  It is a huge penalty in time. 

The idea that you must pay to park is not intrinsically unreasonable; but the lack of on-site information and signage is extraordinary.  It would be unthinkable in all places north of the tropic of Cancer, and in most places south of it, too.

But as I say, most people get to know the deal, so neither the cost nor the need for guesswork nor the instances of gross injustices for genuine “don’t knows” is the prime cause for concern.

Much higher up the worry list is the administrative “attitude” that this situation represents;  the fact that officials (not only but also not least in motoring) grant themselves sweeping, unilateral and perhaps unlawful “authority” to punish motorists without a smidgen of countervailing “responsibility” to explain or advise or inform or account for what they do… or don’t do.

When have you ever heard of a road administrator being punished for failing to do a job properly? 

 The real problem –  the one that turns even something as banal as a parking ticket into a major national issue – is that the public apparently think this situation is okay.  Everybody moans, but no one takes any proper remedial action, either individually or institutionally. 

It is that, not fees or fines, that should make us shudder.  When will it be time to cry “enough!”  How, and by whom, should that shout be uttered? 

Given today’s date, how about this for an initial distress call:  “May Day!  May Day!”