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Thursday, January 22, 2004
Collection of parking fees
By Elias L. Espinoza
PARKING. The National Building Code and City Zoning Ordinance require buildings or establishments to provide free parking spaces for customers. These laws are rather breached than complied with.
The Mango Square, the latest among the establishments to rise in Cebu City, is already charging motorists who use their parking spaces without exception to customers of the stores or shops within the mall.
Perhaps in compliance with the law, Mango Square Mall at the beginning did not collect any parking fee to motorists who go to the shops. When I went there last December, my attention was caught by the presence of tollgates.
An employee of a photo shop expressed apprehension that the collection of parking fees at the mall’s parking area will drive away their customers.
I suppose the management of Mango Square is just trying to copy what the Ayala Mall has been doing. Ayala Mall at first did not collect parking fees for its underground parking area.
If I remember correctly, I think it was two years later after Ayala Mall opened that it started collecting parking fee from P5 then to P15 per vehicle.
The difference though with Mango Square and Ayala Mall is that the latter has open free parking spaces. I have not seen free parking spaces at Mango Square. SM, Country Mall, and White Gold provide free parking spaces.
Pardon me for the language, but are our civil servants in the Office of the Building Official (OBO) sleeping on their jobs that they haven’t done something on this blatant violation? You know alligators won’t bite when full.
SLAP. The seizure of 25 right-hand-drive (RHD) sports utility vehicles (SUV) by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) 7 here, headed by Director Rey Esmeralda, is no doubt a slap on the faces of the Cebu Customs authorities.
The importation of RHD vehicles, which usually come from Japan, are banned under our laws. It is simply amazing how these expensive SUVs passed through the customs’ eagle eyes, so to speak, without their knowledge.
Customs Collector Billy Bibit was quick to defend his son, which was allegedly alluded to by the NBI as the person who caused its release from the port area.
It was superfluous for Bibit, though, to say that his son, his namesake, has no authority to release the hot goods. It goes without saying that his son has no authority because he is apparently not an employee of the bureau.
But you know there is more than meets the eye in what the collector may have said. Unwittingly, the collector even admitted that his son is into the buy-and-sell business of motor vehicles.
The people in the Bureau of Customs are now looking for a loophole by claiming that seized units must come from Subic to somehow cover their embarrassment.
Imagine, the shipment allegedly came in November yet and those units have been in that warehouse in Mandaue City for sometime before the NBI agents got an information that the duties for those SUVs were not paid.
Not to be outwitted by the customs authorities, NBI Director Esmeralda applied for a search warrant before MTCC Judge Rogelio Lucmayon in Mandaue City to seize those SUVs.
Under the circumstance, the NBI can’t be bound by the Bureau of Customs to submit the seized units to them. Under the law, the court which issued the search warrant has the custodia legis (legal custody) of the seized units.
Bare of legalities, the customs can do nothing with the NBI’s seizure of those units. Beyond the seizure of these units, what comes to mind is the question why the importation of SUVs is so rampant these days.
Among the reasons I know from my grapevine is that some politicos are behind it for the coming May polls.
Rice smuggling used to be the source of funds for some politicos in power to bankroll their candidacy. Now it has spread to motor vehicles that, in most cases, are declared as spare parts.
Yes, the government may have earned a little from these misdeclared importations but the bulk of it, whether we like it or not, did not go to the campaign kitty of influential politicos but to the wrong pockets.
Isn’t it surprising that despite efforts to collect more revenues to the extent of taxing so much the taxpayers, our economy is still not off the hook? But look at our supposed civil servants, they live in style.
(January 22, 2004 issue)
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