When one drives into the car park of a Malaysian skyscraper, one expects to pay more than one should. Park the car for 70 minutes and expect to pay for two hours. And hourly charges rise even more the longer one parks. One has learnt to live with it, this Bolehland official habit of petty thievery. Malaysia allegedly is at the cutting edge of technology, but we do not miss a turn to tell the world we are on its chopping block, not its cutting edge. She cannot sort out minor quirks in the system which enables car park operators and others to squeeze the public even more. The Universiti Sains Malaysia now worries how a Malaysian could be awarded the Nobel Prize, without the underlying climate for serious research into the sciences. We believe that if we talk about it, we would get it.

The business man rides on it to rip the public when he can. And so it is at the Phileo Damansara I carpark. To go there is a torture. First it can take one, on normal days and times, about 30 minutes to get from Damansara or Taman Tun Ismail. Then one drives into a cavernous cave of four levels of car parks and lose oneself in the maze if one is not used to the place. It charges RM2 an hour, and a flat rate of RM3 rate when one comes in after 6.00pm. Which is fine. But come 31 December, three days ago, I went to see a friend, came in at 3.35pm and left with him at 6.25pm. I expected to pay, as in the past, RM6. But it demanded RM11! The fellows I complained to could not explain, mumbled about a special charge, and looked away embarrassed.

I had no choice but pay. I also found this RM5 night charge was for New Year revellers who would not mind a little extra for parking. Did the management announce this special charge to those who came in earlier and stayed on after 6.00pm in the course of their work? Of course, not. It is common for such charges to be sprung upon the public. Look at how the new highway toll rates were announced. The full page advertisemts announcing it was published in the newspapers after it took effect. The Phileo Damansara I did not even bother. It is normal in most places to pay the nightly rate to those who come in after it is in effect, and all those who came before pay the old rate if they leave shortly after the new rates are in effect. Not here. So for the last hour, I paid RM7 -- the RM2 for the third hour and RM5 for 23 minutes. It is a ripoff. Of a kind Bolehland accepts as commonplace.

As it is, the Phileo Damansara complex is on the edge of a traffic nightmare. Its developers decided it need not have proper entrances and exists, and expected the Petaling Jaya municipal council to provide them. Since the Prime Minister's son was a significant shareholder in the developer, it worked. But by the time the road came to be built, so many political and business calculations had gone wrong, including the travails of the now invisible but not forgotten man in Sungei Buloh. The road was built not to make it easier to enter the complex but that one had to be built. The new toll plaza adjacent to it only made it worse. All who did not want to be ripped off at the toll booth took this road to Tun Ismail or Damansara Utama and beyond.

Now, the Phileo Damansara complex has unoccupied offices, and many who remain think of moving elsewhere. So, I find it curious that this supposedly shrewd business group continues to annoy those with offices there by annoying their clients with such instant ripoffs in parking chargs. I am not surprised that they try to con those who come into contact with them. But I am that they could get away with it for all time. Especially when the group, once highly regarded not for its own sake but for those on its board, is just another timeserving office complex in a city of vacant office complexes running hither and thither to make it pay its way by such pettifogging price gouging.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my