Tuesday, February 26, 2013

What is DBKL doing?

I am most disappointed with DBKL.  I had an incident sometime in April last year.  The parking ticket which I had purchased from the parking meter which I had displayed on the dashboard somehow fell from the dashboard when I closed the car door. As I was walking to my car, I was surprised to find that the DBKL officer was writing out a parking fine.  I showed the DBKL officer the parking ticket which I had purchased.  He said - the parking fine has been issued he can't cancel it.  Asked me to go to the DBKL office.  So I went to DBKL office  to explain and I was asked to complete a form and see the DBKL officer housed in the room next to the counter. This is where it got more annoying. Firstly the DBKL officer in the room was reading newspaper whilst there was a queue of people.  After waiting for some time, I asked the officer if he could accept the completed form with the attached parking ticket and to cancel the parking fine.  He said - leave it on his desk and leave. - He hardly bothered to look up as he spoke.

Sometime in November, more than 6 months later, I received a letter from DBKL.  In the letter, I was informed that the fine is reduced to a minimum fine of RM30 from RM100.  I was utterly shocked it took DBKL so long to get back to me, and not to cancel the fine but to impose a fine. I would assume that the parking ticket was sufficient proof of payment of the parking - with the time stamp and also the car registration number were clearly printed. It is annoying as the DBKL officer in the room could have told me to pay RM30 there and then instead of asking me to make another trip to DBKL to pay RM30.  On top of that, I cannot see any justification in DBKL requiring me to pay RM30 when I had clearly paid for the parking.  Why DBKL would want to penalise someone like me who has clearly complied with the parking regulations.  I really hope that the Minister in charge of DBKL could look into this.

My experience with DBKL, as a resident, seems to have deteriorated over the years. When I first moved to KL over 10 years ago,  I used to be proud of the DBKL services.  I used to tell my friends that when I found a monitor lizard in the garden, it took just a phone call to DBKL and a team of DBKL riders were dispatched and arrived at our house in less than 10 minutes.  A few years ago, a similar incident happened, and I called DBKL and was told to call another number.  When I called that number, it took some time to find the person in charge and DBKL officers took more than an hour to arrive at our house. Of course the monitor lizard is no longer there. Again, hopefully, the Minister in charge of DBKL could look into this matter.