Barnwali Sarkar (Name Changed) hardly took three minutes to see off his son at Birsa Munda Airport in Ranchi on August 13. She was on her way to the exit point of the airport when an ugly encounter erupted between her and the parking agent that demeaned the International class airport.
Despite the fact that she was following rules of the airport, the lady in her 40s had to not only pay parking fee forcefully but to face utter embarrassment in terms of loose talks and uncivilised language by the so called parking agents there.
The case of Sarkar does not seem to be isolated one as passengers at the airport in Ranchi often complaint of cheating by the parking agents by charging them illegitimately even for crossing the driveway within the stipulated time limit of five minutes. The electronic boom bar, on the basis of which the time taken by a vehicle inside the driveway zone is determined, is said to have gone out of order due to heavy rains in the last few days.
Passengers along with their acquaintances do have to confront such situation every now and then as they have to pay parking fee ‘illegitimately’ charged by the unruly parking agents.
Despite the fact that the Airport Authorities allow them to stop for a maximum of 5 minutes at the drive-away zone, people coming to the Airport Terminal, not even stopping at the drive-away for few minutes, are forcibly being made to pay the parking fee by the parking agents at Ranchi Airport.
When asked about the timing machine, the agents started giving lame excuses.
“The machine was there till Wednesday but somehow, it went dysfunctional due to heavy rain on Friday…..they have sent the machine to get it fixed. They system will be re-established once the machine is back,” said a parking staff Birendra Kumar.
Senior airport officials, who were not aware of the problem, also asserted that the there has been some instances of confrontation of passengers with the parking agents as there was some problem with the timing machine.
“There is some problem with the electronic boom bar that is why the passengers are being provided manual tokens as parking tickets,” said Airport Director Anil Vikram. The contractor has been asked to get the electronic boom bar repaired immediately and has also been directed to keep a spare one for such emergencies, added the official.
The Director, however, said that if there was any problem, the passengers taking a proactive approach should have informed the Terminal Manager immediately, who was available all the time in the terminal building.
According to the official, any vehicle entering into the Airport Terminal is provided an electronically generated token by a hand held electronic boom bar at the entry on which the time of entry of the vehicle is depicted. The token is valid for only five minutes and anybody crossing the time limit has to pay the parking charges fixed for different vehicles by the airport authorities at the exit where the parking staffs have been deputed to check timings entered on the slip.
“Before fixing the timing for the drive way, a complete research work was done by the airport authorities only after which, five minutes’ time was fixed for each of the vehicle,” said a commercial staff at Ranchi Airport. We kept an eye on every vehicle and noted the time taken by them during the entry and exit from the terminal building, said the official.
The official also revealed that the contract for the parking lot has been awarded to one Ajit Kumar who is charged a sum of Rs 3-3.5 lakh per month to the Airport Authorities as revenue.
There are several passengers who just come to drop passengers and drive away without entering the parking area or stopping at the terminal barely for few seconds but are forced to pay the parking fee. No one with family or acquaintances would like to argue with the agents as they are generally in a hurry to take their guest to their destinations.