IT cannot be said with surety for other cities, but shopping in Lahore, especially the DHA area, has become more of a headache than a source of joy and enjoyment.

The so-called ‘token system’, whereby each car is charged for parking at a spot, was, in its initial form, limited to kerb side parking, followed by provision and accessibility of huge parking plazas in the vicinity of markets and offices for which the public was charged according to hours.

The aforementioned systems have proven to be effective in Australia along with many other countries which have efficiently managed to tackle the load of parked vehicles off their roads to designated spots. It is technically for these services that people are charged on hourly basis.

Sharing a bit of my personal experience of living in Australia for a while now, the authorities actually encourage people to use these facilities and avoid parking on the roads by offering free spots for first two to three hours.

My recent visit to Lahore, however, has metamorphosed my perspective on this take. Why not commercialise every inch of the road and extort money from public by whatever means one can? And that, too, with such minimal investment as printing misspelled booklets of parking tokens, hiring from among the unemployed public, and giving them uniforms with ‘DHA’ written on them.

The spots right in front of the shops situated in designated commercial areas that were once free for parking are now charged Rs50 every time a vehicle is parked irrespective of the duration of occupancy or the presence of an attendant.

Furthermore, one will be charged as many times as an individual parks the vehicle in the area in front of different shops. So, to illustrate, if I wish to make stops at three different locations within the same area, I will be charged thrice.

This unjustified capitalisation of public roads, when objected to, is responded with an absurd suggestion to rather park on roads elsewhere. In that case, they might as well install traffic lights on the kerbs, because no space is expected to be left on the roads once all the vehicles are eventually parked on them.

Living in DHA was once considered a luxury, but that is no more the case because of the mindset that still enslaves the relevant development authorities. The departments concerned should pay heed to this latest form of corruption before putting on display in the entire city banners telling us, ‘Say no to corruption’.

Aminah Mohsin
Sydney, Australia

Published in Dawn, January 1st, 2023