LAHORE, Sept 30: The Lahore Parking Company (LPC), a firm registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan on Aug 11 this year under Section 32 of the Companies Ordinance-1984, may lease out a majority of its existing parking lots in the city to a Turkish firm in future so as to avoid hectic task to run these directly.

Sources in the Punjab government say though the newly established LPC, a subsidiary of the City District Government of Lahore, is yet to take a final decision about handing over/leasing out city’s most of the parking stands to the foreign firm, it is presently planning, designing and under taking various tasks related to parking lots and problems in the city under technical assistance of the Turkish experts.

They say the foreign experts have been initially entrusted with the task to assist the LPC in designing, planning and managing the existing parking lots and constructing the new state-of-the-art automated parking plazas at Liberty, Moon Market of Iqbal Town, Barkat Market and Hafeez Centre. “But finally the LPC will lease out its various parking lots, including these four, to the firm not only to avoid the hectic task but also to earn revenue without any direct operational intervention in the parking field.

The LPC will have a monitoring role alone, if the firm succeeds to get the parking lots on lease,” says a source.

He says the LPC is currently in the process of taking over the entire parking affairs from the CDGL’s public facility department.

Another source says the government had decided to establish LPC after it received serious complaints about corruption by the officials of CDGL’s public facility department in leasing out and handling affairs of over 350 parking stands in the city. “The CDGL in the past also sent a reference to the Anti-Corruption Establishment for taking a judicial action against officials of the public facility department for allegedly committing a massive corruption in parking stands’ allotment, fee collection, tax etc. during the last couple of fiscal years.”

When contacted District Coordination Officer Noorul Amin Mengal said the perception about giving the entire parking lots to a foreign firm by the LPC in future was wrong. “The Turkish experts are only assisting and building capacity of the LPC in establishing modern automated parking plazas in the city,” he said, adding that the CDGL had given a seed money of Rs100 million to the LPC so that it could initially adjust, settle and stabilise itself in dealing with the city’s parking system.

To a question, he said if the LPC decided to lease out its parking lots to some foreign experts in future, the CDGL would ensure inviting international tenders to the effect.