Karachi’s 30 million population has only 41 charged parking spots

Alongside several issues including infrastructure, sewerage, garbage disposal, and others Karachi has another prominent problem: inadequate parking space for vehicles. With an increase in population to thirty million, the residents simply do not have enough space to park their vehicles.

Commercial areas were already facing a lack of free spaces but the constructions of high-rise buildings has increased the problem multifold. As a result, the residents of Karachi have to pay charges for parking their vehicles in markets, roads, outside restaurants, and other places.

People who receive parking services from the different district municipal corporations working under the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation must pay Rs30 to park their bikes and Rs100 for cars.

The charges were capped by administrator Karachi Dr Saif-ur-Rehman in December 2022, but they have not stopped yet.

“We can’t stop taking parking charges, because the corporation collects revenue from this amount,” said Wasim Sajid, director of the charge parking cell working under KMC. Without disclosing the specific amount he added that KMC gathered millions from charge parking.

When he was asked about the several charged parking operated by DMC illegally, he replied there was not enough space for the parking.

“We don’t have enough space to construct charged parking stations and some of our parking space has been already closed due to the construction work in the city.”

In a recent order passed on August 28, the Sindh High Court stated that it will not allow any illegal and unauthorized parking. But unlimited vehicles are still seen in unauthorized parking.

However, after paying all charges fixed by the DMCs and which are not mentioned on their website, the citizens are unsatisfied with their services.

Neha Qureshi, a bike rider, said that she has been fed up with the unconformable parking area she uses as despite paying fees the parking attendants don’t take care of the bikes, especially scooties which have plastic bodies.

She claims that some parts of her bike were broken because she used to park her bike in the parking of DMC, whenever, she went for shopping or other places.

Qureshi said the parking attendant used to park bikes very closely without leaving space, and at the time when the owner asked to remove a bike from the parking, the man, usually wearing a yellow or orange cap, came and pulled the bike recklessly. This left her bike damaged in multiple places.

However, as per the KMC, they don’t have enough space for parking while the number of vehicles is increasing rapidly. The lack of space has barred the department from making a proper system to resolve this issue, said Sajid.

Saddar town the biggest commercial area of the city due to the lack of parking spots always looks like a congested place of the city, where the traffic police and KMC’s lifting cell remain working actively. But it has no legal space for parking.

An online seller Fiza said that she used to go to Saddar to buy products for sale, as it is a great wholesale market. However, she said there were no places for parking.

“Once I parked my bike near the footpath constructed with the wall but when I returned, my bike was not there,” she said

“I came to know that the vehicles lifting cell of traffic police had picked up my bike when I approached them, they asked me Rs 200 as wrong parking challan.”

Wasim Sajid admitted that they impose fines on those who wrongly park their vehicle because this interrupts the traffic movement. However, he added that the action is taken against double parking and avoid single line parking.

Data obtained from KMC by using the Right to Information Act Sindh 2016 has revealed that Karachi has only 59 parking spots. The administration owns 15 charged parking in District East, seven in District Central, 10 in District South, and five in District Korangi.

However, 18 parking spots of the department have been rented out to private entities including shopping marts. Wasim Sajid added that these reserved parking spaces are providing revenue of Rs2 million to 2.5 million every month.

Moreover, the director added that previously the department was running more than 80 sites but due to construction and development work in several areas of the city, traffic has to be diverted onto service road and vehicles can no longer be allowed there.