LAHORE: The first phase of converting city’s 66 parking areas into state-of-the-art parking lots is likely to be launched by June as the Lahore Parking Company (LPC) and a Saudi-German joint venture are devising an action plan these days.

The LPC had entered into an agreement with the joint venture, Advance Global Communication Network (AGCN) of Saudi Arabia and Green Park of Germany, last month to modernise 246 parking sites in two years.

According to the deal, the venture will equip the sites with state-of-the-art instruments in two phases within two years and operate them for seven years. “The project is exclusively based on a Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) basis. The venture’s lead partner, AGCN, will give us 45.5pc share of its total revenue/income. After seven years, they will hand over these parking lots to us,” an LPC official told Dawn on Tuesday.

He said work on identification and handing over of sites, risk assumptions, planning, staff deployment and operation was almost complete. He said the venture would soon place an order for importing equipment/instruments required to be installed at the 66 sites in phase 1.

“And as soon as the firm receives equipment, most probably by May, it will start installing them at the sites by mid or end of June,” the official added.

He said modernisation of the 66 sites was likely to be completed in December, adding phase II of the project involving the remaining 180 would be launched in January next year, which is expected to be completed by December.

Talking about the parking sites after the project ends, the official said the LPC was authorised to either extend the contract -- subject to satisfactory performance of the group -- or hand it over to other interested firms through bidding.

Regarding encroachments creating parking issues in the city, the official said the city district government had given representation to the parking company in its anti-encroachment committee in this regard.

“During the ongoing massive anti-encroachment operation, the teams have succeeded in retrieving as many as 15 to 20 pieces of state land. These sites have been handed over to the LPC for establishing parking lots,” the official said.

He said the company would regulate all privately run parking lots (at hospitals, plazas, shopping malls etc) to minimise complaints of overcharging.