DURING its recent sitting, the eThekwini Municipality’s Council unanimously approved an application by the eThekwini Transport Authority (ETA) to enter into a five-year parking management contract for the inner city.
The proposal will seek to appoint a service provider for the complete financing, provision, installation, operation and maintenance of a street and municipal parking grounds parking management system.
It will further require the service provider to identify, train and capacitate individuals who will afterwards be allocated a specific number of parking spaces from which they will collect parking fees.
The proceeds from these parking spaces would be then distributed between the attendant, the service provider and the municipality in terms of an agreed percentage.
A similar model already applies in Pietermaritzburg and Greytown, and was researched by Ward 97 councillor André Beetge and tabled to Council as a notice of motion (NOM). It was seconded by councillor Nicole Graham, in 2013 as a possible solution to the ever increasing number of car guard all over Durban.
Beetge requested that the ETA extend consideration to profiling and accommodating existing car guards in the first instance because some of them work with criminals and some are dependant on various intoxicating substances.
“They should be separated from the vast majority who are only people unable to find work in an extremely hostile environment. The project will afford people dignity of legitimate employ, as opposed to being reliant on alms or virtually begging to put food on the table,” he said.
In closing, Beetge pleaded with the city to, given the success of the 12 month pilot project scheduled to start from May, consider extending the project across all eThekwini suburbs as a self-funded employment project.
